TORONTO – Bills to reform Brazil’s mining industry are expected to go before Congress in late March or early April and could be enacted by 110 days after that, the country’s mines and energy minister said in an interview on Sunday.
A remodeled mining code, aimed at reviving investor interest, was first proposed in 2009 but stalled in Congress in 2013. To ease its passage, the bill has been broken into two sections that revise government royalties and establish a new regulator.
“We are finishing the discussions inside the government, we are very near closing the discussion for them to go to Congress,” Fernando Coelho Filho said in an interview at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto, which runs Sunday to Wednesday.
“If we are able to send both of them, in late March or early April, (implementation would be) probably 90 to 110 days after that,” he said. The minister also said a decision on who will replace Vale Chief Executive Murilo Ferreira, whose term expires on May 26, could come by the end of March or beginning of April.
State pension funds led by Previ Caixa de Previdência [PREVI.UL], Bradespar SA, Mitsui & Co and an investment arm of state development lender BNDES are all members of Valepar SA, the investment holding company that controls Vale.
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