In the first part of this series, we outlined the general landscape of the National Policy on Critical and Strategic Minerals (PNMCE) and the sector’s reaction to its approval in the Senate. Now we take a closer look at one of the points that drove that reaction: the approval power granted to the National Council for the Industrialization of Critical and Strategic Minerals (CIMCE).
Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the approved text establishes that certain mining sector transactions require prior approval, exercised jointly by CIMCE and Brazil’s National Mining Agency (ANM), through a screening mechanism to be defined by regulation. Four scenarios are covered:
- change of corporate control, direct or indirect, of a titleholder of mineral rights over critical and strategic minerals;
- access to geologic information of strategic interest, or relevant participation or significant influence of foreign companies in titleholders of mineral rights over these critical and strategic minerals;
- international contracts, agreements, or partnerships involving the supply of these minerals under conditions that could affect the country’s economic or geopolitical security;
- transfer, assignment, or encumbrance of mineral titles granted by the Union.
It’s worth noting that the text does not leave this power entirely open-ended. Article 41, Paragraph 3 requires CIMCE’s internal structure to separate its policy-formulation functions from those related to project approval and the review of corporate acts, and expressly states that this cannot compromise the regulatory, oversight, and granting powers already assigned by law to ANM.
During the Senate process, amendments were introduced seeking more predictability for this mechanism: one proposed a maximum deadline for CIMCE’s decision, requiring a reasoned justification in case of denial; another proposed replacing the approval requirement with a simple registration procedure. Neither was accepted by the rapporteur.
In practice, this means that, beyond presidential sanction, the sector is also waiting on the regulation due within 90 days of the law’s publication, which must address CIMCE’s structure and duties. The expectation is that this regulation will also clarify the criteria, deadlines, and actual procedure for the screening mechanism, but that is not explicitly guaranteed in the text.
In summary, the text expands the scope of screening to four distinct fronts, from corporate control to the mere presence of foreign capital, but limits the process’s safeguards to an internal separation of functions within CIMCE itself, without setting a deadline, an objective criterion, or a simpler registration alternative. The two amendments that attempted to bring this into the text were rejected, leaving CIMCE with considerable discretion until the regulation clarifies these points.
In the next piece, we turn to CIMCE’s composition and the relative weight of each segment represented on the council.
Note: this article was written based on the text of PL 2,780/2024 approved by the Senate on September 2, 2026, which remains under review for presidential sanction or veto, with a deadline of September 25, 2026.
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