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At the end of 2022, President Jair Bolsonaro sanctioned Law 14.514/2022, which regulates the Brazilian Nuclear Industries Company S/A (INB) regarding the mining, research, and commercialization of nuclear minerals, as well as the mining activity, nuclear materials, their concentrates, and derivatives.
However, the veto was sanctioned with all the provisions that aimed to strengthen the entire structure of the National Mining Agency (ANM). This law determines that it is the ANM’s responsibility to regulate, authorize, standardize, and supervise research activities, control, and mining of nuclear minerals in the country, but it revoked all those provisions that would enable the Agency to perform the significant new functions and those it already executes. The ANM has faced several blockages and budget cuts, which have proven insufficient to advance the authority’s operations.
The collection of CFEM – the fees paid by miners for compensating damages caused by mining activities – grows every moment and reached a record value of R$ 10.2 billion in 2021, of which 7% of this amount should legally be passed to the ANM, but in reality, they received only R$ 90 million. For the director of Institutional Relations of the Association of Mining Municipalities of Minas Gerais and Brazil (AMIG), Wlamir Salvador, the neglect of the ANM is absurd and is increasingly worsening. The director hopes that the ministers of Mines and Energy can at least change this reality and that Congress will overturn the vetoes that are currently being processed in the House regarding VETO No. 64/2022, for the reparations of these damages to the Agency.
In total, there are basically three vetoes currently being considered in the National Congress regarding VETO No. 64/2022. The first concerns the creation of 95 additional positions in the ANM structure (which would total 349) to meet all the activities and responsibilities that this agency has, given the reduced number of employees;
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USA and China compete for Brazil over resources that could be worth trillions — rare earths put the country at the center of a global dispute
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With 74% of companies facing difficulties in hiring, technicians and engineers in renewable energy are becoming scarce in Brazil and are essential to support the expansion of solar, wind, and green hydrogen projects.
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After China, it’s now the turn of the USA to ‘secure’ a share of Brazil’s natural resources: the country buys critical rare earths for R$ 3 billion and enters the center of the global technology dispute.
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Rare earths are in everything, from cell phones to bullet trains, and what almost no one realizes is why they have become the target of such a delicate global war.
The second discusses the reformulation of the National Mining Fund, so that it utilizes as management fund for the ANM, in order to finance some studies and projects, technological development and innovation, including dam safety, mine closure, the mineral sector, sustainable mining development, and encouragement of research, the mining of nuclear minerals and nuclear safety.
Lastly, the alignment of the remuneration of ANM services with other regulatory agencies, with the intention of standardizing remuneration, considering the equivalence of responsibilities with other regulatory agencies. The Association of Mining Municipalities of Minas Gerais and Brazil (AMIG) has been demanding the strengthening of the ANM for several years and highlights the urgent need for a structured and active agency that seeks to provide legal security, aimed at curbing illegalities in this sector, as well as supporting an adequate expansion of mineral exploration in Brazil, being supervised and properly allocated through CFEM resources.
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