The agency’s general director hopes to hold the event this year despite resource constraints; 17,000 areas are eligible for concession
The general director of ANM (National Mining Agency), Mauro Henrique Moreira Sousa, said this Tuesday (June 9, 2026) that the regulator intends to hold a new Auction of Available Areas in 2026, despite the agency projecting and operational capacity after made by the government at the end of May.
The agency currently registers 17,000 areas suitable for federal concessions. Although it assesses that the of R$ 22 million in the agency’s budget could harm the process, Sousa states that the regulator continues with the intention of holding the event this year.
According to the director, holding the event still depends on an alignment of the agency’s systems and that of B3, responsible for conducting auctions for mining areas. A technological incompatibility prevents the process from progressing. In 2025, when it was already facing funding cuts, the agency had to interrupt contracts in the area of information technology.
“We have a contract with B3, which is the one who will develop these auctions for us. At the moment, we are reconciling the systems. As last year we had to import some contracts in the technology area, we were out of date, so our reconciliation of our systems with that of B3 ended up running into some level of incompatibility”Sousa told journalists during the International Seminar on Critical and Strategic Minerals at Ibram (Brazilian Mining Institute).
ANM’s contract with B3 initially provides for the offer of 7,000 areas, but the agency must first ensure that the 2 systems “talk” properly and that the areas go through a debugging phase to avoid questions or failures. In the long term, the objective is to hold at least 3 auctions of 7,000 areas in the next 2 years of the contract.
The director general also stated that the lack of resources following consecutive cuts in the agency’s budget has been compromising the auction schedule since last year.
“Last year, we didn’t hold any auctions. Our idea in the board is that we promote an auction this year. We will pursue this as an institutional objective that is interesting for society and the market”he declared.
