BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s government plans to introduce a bill to set a flexible royalty rate for iron ore that would be between 2 percent and 4 percent depending on international prices for the steelmaking raw material, Broadcast reported on Thursday. The current iron ore royalty rate is 2 percent.
In an interview with Broadcast, the real-time news service of newspaper Estado de S.Paulo, Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho said the government plans to review the country’s mining royalty scheme as part of a wider reform of the sector. The ministry’s press office was not immediately able to confirm the information.
Brazil has been in the process of reforming its mining code since 2009, with a bill put to Congress in 2013. That proposal, which has been stalled due to Brazil’s political crisis and a collapse in commodity prices, sought to double iron ore royalty rates to 4 percent.
Coelho Filho has previously said he wants to break the current bill into three pieces whose passage can more easily be negotiated through Congress.
Most of the details of exactly what the revised proposal will seek to change are still unknown, though the three strands of legislation will focus on a new regulator, government revenue from the industry and wider rules governing mineral extraction.
