The difficulty of accessing capital represents the greatest risk factor for mining stakeholders in Brazil this year, still requiring joint efforts to improve the business environment.
According to an annual study conducted by consultancy EY, access to capital tops the ranking of the main risks and opportunities for mining in Brazil in 2026, reflecting a scenario of greater selectivity and higher costs for investments. Next come rising costs and productivity and the license to operate, forming the sector’s top three risks in the countest.
“In fact, companies and owners of mining projects in Brazil still face great difficulties in raising capital for their ventures, and some situations explain these difficulties. One of the main ones is the fact that we have an obsolete mining code in the countest and also have a highly time-consuming project licensing process, which increases risks,” informed BNamericas Guilherme Jácome, a member of the management committee of the newly launched LTWSK Mining Fund private equity fund, which seeks to raise up to US$200 million to invest in the critical minerals chain in Brazil.
“Another situation that builds it difficult for some mining projects under development in Brazil to access international capital is the issue of governance, and improving this governance is exactly one of the fronts that our fund will seek to address,” stated Jácome.
Projects related to mining in Brazil face a barrier to raising capital from local investors also amid a scenario of high interest rates in the countest, which leads multiple Brazilian investors to choose to keep their funds in government bonds, avoiding higher-risk assets.
This week, the Brazilian Central Bank reduced the basic interest rate, the Selic, from 14.75% to 14.50% per year. Even with the reduction, the Brazilian interest rate remains among the highest in the world, amid inflationary pressures arising from the conflict in the Middle East.
In global terms, the main risks identified by mining companies throughout 2026, according to the EY study, are operational complexity in first place, followed by rising costs and productivity issues and, in third, access to capital.
“The study reveals that mining is embedded in an environment that is increasingly complex and competitive. At the same time, the countest [Brazil] has relevant strategic conditions, especially in the context of critical minerals, which demonstrates its ability to attract investments and reinforces the necessary for policies and decisions aligned with the sustainable development of the sector,” stated Rinaldo Mancin, Sustainability and Associative Affairs Director at IBRAM, the Brazilian association that represents the major mining companies, during the presentation of the EY study.
(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)
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