National Mining Agency experiences chaos and new stoppage – 07/13/2023 – Environment

A crisis is plaguing the ANM (National Mining Agency) with a dimension that, according to different actors involved, has made it impossible for the agency to fulfill its role of regulating and supervising the country’s mineral sector. The situation increases the environmental risks already normally inherent to the activity.

This week, ANM servers carry out the fifth stoppage since the end of May, and the longest of all, starting on Monday (10) and going until this Friday (14). In all, there will be 12 days of interruption. During each of them, employees completely paralyze most of their work, except for so-called “critical activities”, such as inspection of dams in an emergency situation.

Created in 2017, during the Michel Temer government, to replace the DNPM (National Department of Mineral Production), the ANP is the youngest among the 11 Brazilian regulatory agencies and has, according to the law that created it, the purpose of “promoting the management of the Union’s mineral resources, as well as the regulation and supervision of activities for the use of the country’s mineral resources.

The Sinagências (National Union of Civil Servants of National Regulatory Agencies) and Asanm (Association of Civil Servants of the ANM) state that only about 30% of the vacancies foreseen by law for the ANM are occupied, and it is essential to open a public tender for filling the approximately 1,400 unoccupied vacancies.

Servers also complain about the salary gap in relation to servers from the ten other national regulatory agencies (they point out that salaries are on average 46% lower).

In an open letter to the population, they state that the ANM situation is “unsustainable” and “chaotic”. Recalling the tragedies of Mariana and Brumadinho, the manifesto points to the expansion of illegal mining as one of the risks of a scrapped ANM, “causing damage to the original peoples and the environment; loss of billions of reais in taxes and mineral exploration fees arising from ANM’s inability to supervise them; the state’s inefficiency in supervising gold mining activities, leading to money laundering and tax evasion, among other consequences”.

Last year, the Federal Court of Auditors included ANM’s situation in the “High Risk List” of the Federal Public Administration, pointing out the lack of human resources and the agency’s budgetary and financial deficit, with impacts on planning, regulation and inspection of the sector.

While it is the second regulatory agency that collects the most (R$ 10.3 billion in 2021, R$ 7.2 billion in 2022 with royalties alone), behind only the ANP (petroleum), the ANM is the third-to-last in budget (R$ 79.2 million in 2022, R$ 94.2 million in 2023), ahead only of Antaq (water transport) and Ancine (cinema), according to data presented by its CEO, Mauro Henrique Moreira Sousa, at an audience in April in the Chamber of Deputies.

Geologist Ricardo Peçanha, ANM employee and director of Asanm, recalls that, since the creation of the agency, the agency’s attributions have only increased —such as the responsibility, newly acquired by law, of administering nuclear minerals—, while the structure has withered. According to Peçanha, the state of Bahia, which accumulates thousands of requests for mineral research, has only two geologists from the ANM to analyze the requests.

Ibram (Brazilian Institute of Mining), which represents the sector, supports the demand for servers. “If we have a strong ANM, we will have a strong and sustainable mining”, says Raul Jungmann, CEO of the entity.

Echoing a complaint from trade unionists, Jungmann recalls that, by law, the government should apply annually to the ANM 7% of the collection with CFEM (financial contribution for mineral exploration, the mining royalty), but has only applied around 1%.

The remainder, complains the Ibram leader, has been used by the government to run a primary surplus. “The Treasury sucks all these funds into the surplus account. But when you do that, you weaken the regulatory body, and obviously this has an impact on the sector.”

President of the Parliamentary Front for Sustainable Mining in Congress, federal deputy Zé Silva (SDD-MG) joins the chorus. “It is a consensus of the private sector, of entrepreneurs, of civil society, of Parliament that the ANM has to be structured to fulfill its role as a State. For that, political decision and money to hire personnel and invest in modernization and technology are lacking.”

In a note, the MGI (Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services) stated that it authorized the nomination of the 40 candidates approved in the last competition for the agency, with an announcement published in November 2021. On June 16, said the MGI, the minister Esther Dweck announced that 24 vacancies will be filled in the ANM, which were missing to zero the contest that was in progress.

The ministry states that law 8,112, of 1990, prohibits the opening of a new tender as long as there is a candidate approved in a previous tender with an unexpired validity period, but added that the authorization of a new public tender is foreseen for 2023, with no set date.

The MGI said that “it is closely monitoring the situation of the ANM and other bodies and entities of the Federal Public Administration that demand the recomposition of personnel.”

Last week, a meeting with secretaries from the Ministries of Mines and Energy and Management, representatives of the ANM and trade unionists tried to put together a proposal that would prevent this week’s strike – in vain. Negotiations continue.

Sought, the Ministry of Finance did not respond until the conclusion of this edition.