Every day with its agony - today's is certainly hearing engineering firms and making the necessary adjustments to unlock the package of infrastructure concessions - but the government should indeed increase its stock of aspirin. The next headache is expected to come in October, with the bill of the new mining code, launched by President Dilma Rousseff in mid-June and currently being analyzed by Congress. The project has even lost the emergency-vote character, but it is still a bubble at risk of bursting, when it comes back to the light.
A young politician and full of energy, willing to travel a dozen states in the same month to gather suggestions and criticisms, the rapporteur of the code in the Chamber of Deputies, Leonardo Quintão (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party-PMDB, Minas Gerais), is considering major changes in the text sent by the government. He wants to ensure "some right of priority" in mineral exploration by companies that have been dedicated to previous prospecting activities and does not rule out incorporating, in his report, setting the royalties rates paid in the industry. It is everything that the Ministry of Mines and Energy would like to avoid.
In the government’s text, one of the most controversial topics involves the establishment of a single license, for 40 years (it can be renewed), which serves both for prospecting and mineral extraction. Today, these two stages are divided. Hundreds of small or medium-sized companies are prospecting-oriented and, in most cases, when they succeed, they sell exploration rights to the heavyweights in the industry. Under the new code, the government's proposal establishes an auction system of areas and invitation for bids, not pleasing smaller players. They fear mining giants will dominate auction and surveying activity will be concentrated in state-owned agency CPRM, in addition an absence of investments in riskier ventures. "The trend is that we’ll disappear from the map" complains Elmer Prata Salomão, president of the Brazilian Association of Mineral Research (ABPM).
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