MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s government has sent an electricity reform plan to Congress that calls for the state power utility to supply 54% of the market and for the government to be the only extractor of lithium, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday.
The initiative was sent to the lower house of Congress on Thursday as part of an effort to give the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) preferential treatment over private firms to help keep prices low for Mexican users, Lopez Obrador told a news conference.
Mexico’s Interior Minister Adan Lopez, speaking alongside the president, said eight existing concessions for lithium will remain in private hands as long as companies develop them.
Lopez added that certain electricity regulators under the reform will be absorbed by the CFE.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes and Daina Beth Solomon, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Giles Elgood)
