The importance and the role of minerals in the economy of a country or the world is highlighted by the use of the following terms: scarce mineral, critical mineral, and strategic mineral. The validity of the raw material in the economic processes and knowledge about the sources of its acquisition, access barriers, and the shaping of prices on the domestic and international market allow the development of an action strategy. The strategy must take into account the objective of the action, time horizon, the kind of the instruments that need to be used, and the scope of international cooperation. The importance of the raw material for the country is not only the volume of turnover and volume of production obtained thanks to its application. There are also historical, cultural and social reasons for its importance. The authors present arguments for another meaning of the term – mineral criticality. They also point out the linguistic differences between the term “criticality” in Polish and English. They propose to consider water, medicinal raw materials, some rock resources and amber as critical raw materials for various reasons.