AMC defends objective criteria for new critical minerals council

The president of the board of the AMC (Critical Minerals Association), Marisa Cesar, defended this Tuesday (30) that the new board foreseen in the national critical minerals policy has clear criteria to evaluate projects and operations in the sector.

The statement was made during CNN Talks: New Era of Mining, amid the debate on the text approved by the Chamber of Deputies that creates a national policy for critical and strategic minerals. The proposal still needs to pass the Senate.

According to Marisa, the concern is not with the existence of the council, but with the lack of delimitation on what exactly will be submitted for analysis by the board.

"Within the policy, it is not defined which minerals are critical, and they will all pass through the council. At the same time, what type of project will we have to be approved by the council?", he said.

The text approved by the Chamber creates the CIMCE (National Council for the Industrialization of Critical and Strategic Minerals), linked to the Presidency of the Republic. The board will play a role in defining priorities, monitoring strategic projects and guiding instruments to support the sector.

In practice, it will also have veto power over operations considered sensitive, when analyzing projects, contracts and movements involving critical and strategic minerals.

For Marisa, the board's design still needs to be improved to avoid excessive subjectivity and concentration of decisions. The assessment is that, without clear filters, the model can transform the council into an additional stage of approval for operations of different sizes, including smaller contracts and private commercial agreements.

The president of the AMC board cited international examples in which critical minerals policies adopt objective criteria to define when an operation should be subject to government analysis.

According to her, countries like Australia and Canada work with filters linked to the value of the operation, investor profile and geopolitical risks.

In the Australian case, said Marisa, not all operations automatically go through government scrutiny. The analysis considers, for example, whether there is participation of countries considered hostile, such as Russia and Iran, in addition to value criteria for larger operations, in the range of billions of dollars.

She also cited Canada as an example of a country that adopts more restrictive filters regarding Chinese participation in strategic critical mineral assets. The logic, according to Marisa, is to protect sensitive assets without blocking the entire flow of investments and contracts in the sector.

AMC's concern is that, in Brazil, the absence of objective filters creates bottlenecks for operations that do not represent a relevant strategic risk.

Marisa mentioned, for example, smaller offtake structures, a type of contract in which a company commits to purchasing part of the future production of a mineral project.

In her opinion, submitting all these instruments to the council could create administrative obstacles, especially if the panel has a limited structure to analyze a large volume of cases.

The point defended by AMC is that the project needs to find a balance between the interests of the government, the protection of strategic assets and the predictability necessary to attract private capital.

The discussion takes place at a time when Brazil is trying to expand its participation in the global chain of critical minerals, used in sectors such as batteries, renewable energy, defense, fertilizers, semiconductors and high-tech equipment.

Companies in the sector claim that the country needs a public policy to organize priorities, finance projects and encourage value addition. At the same time, they defend that government action is based on technical criteria, legal certainty and respect for business decisions.

CNN Talks: New Era of Mining brings together authorities, businesspeople, experts and representatives of the productive sector to discuss the paths of Brazilian mining in a new phase of global competition for critical minerals, energy transition and security of supply chains.

The meeting takes place at a time when Brazil is trying to transform its geological advantage into economic, industrial and diplomatic protagonism, with debates on financing, environmental licensing, innovation, sustainability, traceability, added value and greater participation of the country in the most noble stages of the mineral chain.

Source: CNN