Government welcomes “upward trajectory” in new investments

Brazil is on an upward trajectory in investments in the mining industry, says Pedro Paulo Dias Mesquita, Secretary for Geology, Mining, and Mineral Transformation in the Mining and Energy Ministry. The evidence, he says, is the volume of investments projected for the 2021-2025 period, in excess of US$ 41 billion. “Comparing this figure with the data for earlier years, we see that confidence is, in fact, greater than it was before, and this improvement is reflected in a growing inflow of investments in mining,” he says, adding that the government has made a great effort to improve policies that affect this industry.

“Since the National Mining Agency (ANM) was set up at the end of 2018,” Mesquita recalls, “we have been working on an agenda to simplify procedures, to make everything available online, and to adopt new rules in a number of areas, all of which certainly helped to attract investments. One example is that companies are now authorised to use their mineral resources as collateral for bank loans; another is the resolution governing resources and reserves. These are demands that the industry had been making for a long time. And it has meant a lot of hard work, not only for this Secretariat [for Geology, Mining, and Mineral Transformation] but for the Mining and Energy Ministry as a whole, for the ANM [National Mining Agency] and other federal government departments. We have made progress we have fostered, on the industry’s behalf, the assurance that mining in Brazil is progressing toward attracting and increasing the volume of investments.”

The resolution authorizing the use of mineral reserves as collateral means that the holder of a mining concession is free to hand over that document to a financial institution as collateral against a loan, while the new rule about resources and reserves brings Brazil into line with other countries in the specific rules governing the certification of mineral reserves and resources.

There have been advances, too, Mesquita says, in fulfilling the targets set out in the Mining and Development Programme (PMD) launched by the ministry in 2020. “The PMD is an aggregate of ten plans,” he notes, “setting out 110 specific targets. It’s a fairly broad plan and serves as guidance for the government’s actions in relation to the mining industry, laying out with full transparency what our policy is and the what is our focus for growth with sustainability.”

In the interview that follows, Mesquita also discusses other progammes, such as Invest Mining, which seeks to attract investments from the capital market for the mining industry in Brazil; the Strategic Minerals Programme, which establishes priorities for relevant mining projects; the offer to the private sector of mineral deposits under the control of the Geological Survey of Brazil (SGM-CPRM); and the auctions at which companies submit their bids for areas made available for exploration or mining, which have attracted the interest of a large number of investors.

Read the whole article on Brazil Mineral Special Issue 2022