Dominican Republic Highlights Rare-Earth Potential at Concordia Summit

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader highlighted the country’s emerging rare-earth potential during the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit in New York on September 21. According to the Presidency of the Dominican Republic, Abinader said significant rare-earth resources were discovered about three years ago and that the country has been since 2022 to investigate the deposits. He said the government expects to determine the size of the reserves by the end of 2026.

Abinader made the remarks during a Concordia session titled “From the Ground Up: Building Critical Mineral Supply Chains in the Americas,” alongside Inter-American Development Bank President Ilan Goldfajn and Colombian Vice President José Manuel Restrepo. Concordia’s official programme says the session examined how Latin America and the Caribbean can contribute to resilient critical-mineral supply chains while creating greater value-added development and strengthening economic ties across the Americas. Abinader also highlighted the challenge of developing refining capacity, given the concentration of rare-earth processing in China.

The Dominican government is seeking to move beyond mineral exploration toward domestic processing and industrialisation. As reported by Dominican Today, Abinader said the government expects to test refinery technology in 2027 and could potentially begin exporting rare-earth materials in 2028. The discussion at Concordia therefore placed the Dominican Republic’s mineral discoveries within a broader hemispheric effort to develop critical-mineral supply chains, attract investment and strengthen regional capacity in technologies considered strategically important to the global economy.