Why Bolivia’s Mining Industry Runs on Zinc and Silver, Not Lithium

Bolivia is usually described as a lithium story, but the export numbers say otherwise. In the first quarter of 2025, lithium carbonate exports earned about US$8 million, while zinc brought in roughly US$331 million and silver about US$353 million.

The Bolivia mining industry rests on five metals: zinc, silver, gold, tin and lead. Lithium sits on top of that base as a large but unproven possibility.

Many investors see Bolivia through only one lens. Base metals investors notice the zinc. Precious metals investors notice the silver. Battery minerals investors notice the salt flats. Each view on its own gives a distorted picture.

This piece maps what Bolivia actually produces, where it comes from, who controls it, and which parts earn money today versus which parts are still speculative. With that map, you can judge where Bolivian supply belongs in your own view of commodity markets.

What does Bolivia actually mine, and what earns the money?

Start with the official numbers. The Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy‘s first-quarter 2025 bulletin, published in May 2025, recorded US$1.516 billion in mineral production value for January to March. Mineral and metallurgical exports reached US$1.012 billion, up 9.9% on the same quarter of 2024. These figures are preliminary and are now more than a year old, so treat them as a snapshot rather than a current reading.

Gold looks odd in this table. It was the largest item by production value at US$537.35 million, yet only US$74.92 million appeared in recorded exports for the quarter.

The bulletin does not fully explain this gap, and it would be a mistake to fill it with guesswork. What you can take from it is that gold is where Bolivia’s measurement problem is largest. Much of the metal is mined by cooperatives, and its path from mine to market is harder to trace than zinc concentrate leaving a large private operation.

The broader point is about concentration.

Five metals, most of the money Silver, zinc, tin, gold and lead made up 91.1% of Bolivia’s mineral export value in Q1 2025. Refined products accounted for only 21.7% of mineral-sector exports.

That second figure matters. Bolivia mostly exports concentrate, which is ore that has been crushed and upgraded but not refined into pure metal. Most of the value-adding processing happens abroad.

The sector is also large relative to the national economy. Bolivia’s statistics agency (INE) reported total exports of US$9.6614 billion for 2025, with mineral extraction exports up 17.3%.

Where Bolivia ranks globally

The US Geological Survey (USGS) 2024 world rankings place Bolivia among the significant suppliers of several metals:

• Silver: 4th, 5.9% of world output
• Antimony: 4th, 4.5%
• Tin: 6th, 7.2%
• Zinc: 7th, 4.3%
• Lead: 8th, 2.4%

None of these positions involve lithium. If you hold exposure to silver, tin, zinc or antimony, Bolivia already affects your market regardless of what happens on the salt flats.

Bolivia’s silver mining potential goes well beyond its fourth-place global ranking, and a deeper look is worthwhile for anyone holding silver exposure.

Who runs Bolivian mining? State control, private mines and cooperatives

The bulletin contains a split that changes how you should read the sector. The people who produce the most are not the people who export the most.

• Production value: about 47.6% cooperatives, 46.5% private mining, 5.9% state mining
• Export value: about 79.8% private mining, 11.8% cooperatives, 8.4% state mining

Private companies dominate formal exports. Cooperatives, which are worker-owned groups that often mine on a small scale, match them in production but account for far less of the recorded export flow.

Above both groups sits the state. The US State Department‘s 2025 investment climate assessment says the Bolivian state keeps complete control of natural resources. Private parties receive temporary exploitation authorisations, which allow them to extract minerals but do not give them ownership of the deposit. A conventional mining concession usually gives the holder stronger rights.

Under the new administration, investment certainty depends on whether policy reform can soften a regime where the state keeps complete control of resources and private parties hold only temporary authorisations.

Formal supply is also concentrated. According to Harvard Growth Lab research from 2026, four operations, San Cristóbal, San Bartolomé, San Vicente and Sinchi Wayra, account for roughly 85% of private production. No comprehensive overhaul of the mining code has been identified since 2024.

In practice, your access to Bolivian deposits is more restricted than in most mining jurisdictions, and much of the country’s reliable export supply depends on a handful of mines.

Why cooperatives matter more than their exports suggest

Cooperatives produce nearly half of the sector’s value and carry real political influence. They can mobilise against reforms covering access, royalties or formalisation.

Many of them, however, lack capital, modern equipment and formal environmental management. Gold is where this shows most clearly. High prices support cooperative output, but they also make traceability, taxation and oversight harder. That is the same informality behind the gold gap in the export table.

Where the minerals come from: Bolivia’s producing regions

Geography sharpens the picture. Look at a map of Bolivia’s production and most of the value sits in the high Andean departments of Potosí, La Paz and Oruro, which together account for 81.4% of national production value in the Ministry’s 2025 comparison. Each region specialises.

Potosí is the polymetallic heart of the country. Polymetallic means its ore bodies contain several metals together. La Paz and Beni lean towards gold, Oruro towards tin, and Santa Cruz towards iron. The named operations show where each commodity comes from:

• San Cristóbal: Bolivia’s largest private mine; about 338,000 wet tonnes of zinc-silver concentrate and 103,000 wet tonnes of lead-silver concentrate in 2024.
• Huanuni: state tin mine in Oruro; 9,102 t of fine tin in 2024, according to COMIBOL.
• Colquiri: state operation in La Paz; 3,984 t of fine tin and 9,810 t of zinc in 2024.
• Corocoro: state copper operation in La Paz.
• Mutún: iron project in Santa Cruz linked to the state steel company, far smaller in value than the main metals.

Nearly half of national output depends on one department. A strike, blockade or operational problem in Potosí can move Bolivia’s total supply, and you can trace that risk directly to specific mines.

Lithium and the risk map: promise versus delivery

The ambition is large. Bolivia has signed two lithium agreements, both in 2024:

• Uranium One (Rosatom subsidiary): about 14,000 t/y of lithium carbonate, roughly US$970 million investment.
• CBC Investments (linked to CATL, Brunp and CMOC): two direct lithium extraction (DLE) plants, about 35,000 t/y, roughly US$1 billion.

DLE is a set of chemical processes that pull lithium straight from brine, instead of relying on months of evaporation in large ponds.

The scale gap Together the proposals add up to about 49,000 t/y of capacity and roughly US$2 billion. Q1 2025 output was about 187 t, so the proposed annual capacity is roughly 262 times that quarter’s production.

Then the obstacles arrive. Both contracts need legislative approval. Communities and civil-society groups challenged them over environmental assessment, transparency and prior consultation, and a 2025 court order suspended the legislative process. As of the latest reporting in October 2026, the contracts were still stalled in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, although a committee had recently approved them for further consideration.

President Rodrigo Paz‘s administration, elected in 2025, has said it will review the contracts for transparency and legal compliance.

With the Uranium One and CBC contracts under review, global demand for battery-grade lithium keeps pressure on Bolivia to deliver, even as the approvals remain stalled in the legislature.

The technical problem is just as real. Bolivian brines contain a high ratio of magnesium to lithium, which makes separation harder, and DLE has not been proven at commercial scale in Bolivia. VDE describes Bolivia as having the largest identified resource base in the “lithium triangle”, yet unlike Chile and Argentina it has no commercial-scale production.

The macroeconomic setting adds pressure. The IMF‘s 2025 Article IV review found foreign-exchange and fuel shortages, with a parallel exchange rate more than 80% weaker than the official rate.

Signed contracts are not capacity. You are better off treating lithium as an option on governance and technology outcomes. Bolivia’s diversified silver and base metals production is the part of the story that already delivers.

These statements are speculative and subject to change based on market developments and policy decisions.

Structural and cyclical constraints on scaling output

Structural:

• Fragmented producers, with capital-poor cooperatives holding major influence.
• State control through exploitation rights instead of ownership-conveying concessions.
• Weak downstream processing, with refined products at 21.7% of exports.
• Remote deposits and thin rail, road, power and water infrastructure.

Cyclical:

• Commodity prices, which the Ministry credited for much of the 2025 rise in production value.
• Foreign-exchange shortages that are hardening into a structural problem.
• Fuel availability and inflation squeezing margins.
• High gold prices, which lift cooperative output but make measurement harder.

Reading Bolivia as a diversified supplier with one big open question

Two Bolivias sit side by side. One is a working supplier of silver, zinc, tin, lead, antimony and gold, run mostly by private mines and cooperatives under firm state control of mineral rights. The other is a lithium project still waiting on lawmakers, courts and unproven technology.

If you keep them separate, your view of the country becomes clearer. Signals worth tracking:

• Legislative votes on the Uranium One and CBC contracts
• The outcome of the Paz administration’s contract review
• Foreign-exchange and fuel conditions
• New Ministry bulletins at mineria.gob.bo, since the figures cited here are preliminary and date from 2025

Investors exploring how institutions shape returns can read our detailed coverage of foreign investment in Bolivian mining, which weighs opportunity against institutional risk.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.