Brazil’s mining regulator on Monday extended the deadlines by up to four years for the closing of many dangerous mine tailings dams like the one that collapsed in January at a Vale SA facility, killing more than 240 people.
Brazil has suffered another mining dam collapse, though this time there are no reports of dead or missing. The Rondonia state environment secretary says the dam in Oriente Novo gave way after a waterspout damaged its structure on Friday.
The head of Brazil's Vale mining giant has stepped down following the collapse of a dam which killed at least 186 people in the town of Brumadinho. Fabio Schvartsman and several other executives asked to be removed after prosecutors called for their dismissal.
Brazilian Industry and Foreign Trade minister Fernando Pimentel met this week in Buenos Aires with President Cristina Fernandez and members of her cabinet to address several bilateral trade issues that growingly concern President Dilma Rousseff because of Argentina’s increasingly market protection policies.
Brazil and Argentina are trying to address their economic and trade differences so that they can reach a long-standing, long term solution, said Marco Aurelio García, the Brazilian Executive advisor on foreign issues and trouble shooter for this kind of conflicts.
Brazil has virtually frozen political and economic relations with Argentina following serious discrepancies that were confirmed during the recent summit of presidents Cristina Fernandez with Dilma Rousseff who cut short the originally scheduled two-day visit to Buenos Aires.
Brazilian mining giant Vale SA will pay two and a half months' salary to workers in Argentina as part of an agreement signed on Friday allowing the miner to exit the 6 billion dollars Rio Colorado potash and fertilizer project.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said during a joint conference with her Argentine peer Cristina Fernández at Government House in Buenos Aires that she was certain the Vale mining company “would find a way to reach an agreement with the Argentine authorities” on the suspended project.
Top officials from the Brazilian mining company Vale which suspended a 6 billion dollars potash development project in Argentina left the country for Sao Paulo last Friday following “on instructions from the security department” of the corporation, according to reports in the Brazilian press.
Investors pulled 1 billion dollars out of Brazil last week as Euro-zone debt fears continue to spook markets and the Brazilian government shows little sign of changing its hefty intervention policies.