Posted on 09 May 2025
Brazil’s development bank BNDES says it received 124 proposals for strategic minerals projects, with a potential total investment of BRL 85.2 billion ($14.82 billion), Kallanish reports.
Its call for proposals, jointly carried out with Study and Project Financing Agency (Finep), closed last week. The New Industry Brazil initiative received business plans from 136 parties in 23 states across the country, far exceeding the planned incentive budget.
Seeking to promote a national “neo-industrialisation,” the institutions unveiled a BRL 5 billion support scheme for successful projects. Of that, BRL 4 billion will come from BNDES and BRL 1 billion from Finep.
“Brazil has unique advantages to attract these investments: vast mineral reserves, a predominantly clean energy matrix, a robust innovation ecosystem and, most importantly, geopolitical neutrality, factors that enable the country to lead the way in adding value to mining in a sustainable manner,” comments BNDES president Aloizio Mercadante. “The high demand reveals the assertive commitment of the industrial policy of President Lula’s government, focused on investments in energy transition.”
The call focuses on aluminium, cobalt, copper, tin, graphite, lithium, manganese, platinum group metals (PGMs), molybdenum, niobium, nickel, silicon, tantalum, rare earths, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium and zinc.
The proposals highlight the greatest interest in rare earths with 27 projects, lithium (25), copper (24) and graphite (20). Overall, the projects covered production, R&D, innovation, processing and manufacturing. The bulk of the identified potential investment, BRL 67.8 billion, was for scaling-up projects.
BNDES and Finep will now evaluate the proposals against the criteria and select winning projects. These will be notified of financial instruments that can be used to support project implementation. In a second phase, approved projects will gain access to credit instruments, equity participation, grants and economic subsidies.
The institutions did not provide a timeline for project selection, nor indicated how many projects could be selected.
Source:Kallanish
