Malaysia Eases Raw Rare Earth Export Moratorium Under Conditional Framework
On October 7, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability confirmed new guidelines that ease the country’s 2024 moratorium on raw rare earth exports, allowing the conditional export of unprocessed rare earth materials for research and development (R&D) and processing purposes. The framework is intended to support the development of Malaysia's rare earth industry while maintaining regulatory oversight, with approvals granted on a case-by-case basis. Malaysia is one of the few nations outside of China that has a domestic rare earth processing industry.
The framework is also designed to attract higher-quality investments, facilitate technology transfer, and support long-term value creation within Malaysia's rare earth ecosystem. The government emphasized that the objective is not to increase export volumes, but to encourage downstream development and build domestic capacity in rare earth processing and related industries. The Department of Mineral and Geoscience Malaysia has since approved the first export application under the new rules for R&D purposes.