Brazil’s Chamber Fast-Tracks Major Mining Code Reform

Overview

• The Chamber of Deputies approved urgency for PL 957/2024 by 311 votes to 135 on Wednesday, June 3, allowing the bill to skip committee steps and go straight to plenary consideration.
• The draft shifts key powers for research, concessions and permissions from the ministry to the Agência Nacional de Mineração (ANM), concentrating decision-making in the regulator and shortening ANM review timelines.
• The text loosens rules for small-scale mining by expanding Permissão de Lavra Garimpeira (PLG) categories, creating a proposed 'floating' PLG that could allow garimpeiros access to conceded areas, and in some cases permitting extraction before final authorization with ANM approval and an environmental license.
• Government ministers, center-left deputies, environmental experts and Ibram warned the changes weaken socioenvironmental safeguards, risk empowering illegal garimpo and strain the ANM given its limited staffing and enforcement capacity.
• Relator Joaquim Passarinho expects a plenary vote in roughly 30 days and the acceleration took place during a thinly attended, partly remote session, raising questions about the speed and political legitimacy of the process.