Q: How is Minas Gerais diversifying its economy and exports? 

Rodrigo Tavares, President of Invest Minas: The work that the government has done, that the Minas Gerais government has done over the past seven years, already seven years and three months, together with the Secretariat for Economic Development and Invest Minas, was first to broaden our export basket a little, which had been very focused on ore, especially iron ore, which is Minas Gerais’ main export item. 

So, first it was about diversifying our chain, having more export items and always staying very close to the market, to capital, trying as much as possible to cut bureaucracy, listening to what the market has to say, what demand it has, so we can be a state, an environment that is favourable and fertile for new investments to arrive and for new companies to set up here. 

The governor always mentions that last year was the first year in which we were able to export more agribusiness products than mining products. Although that was an effective marketing action, this figure is very important to us, because you are not dependent on just one commodity. 

Minas Gerais has an extremely diverse, thriving agribusiness sector. It has coffee, grains, various products and meat, which are exported across the world. This figure represents part of the work of the past seven years to depend less on mining, while always understanding and taking into account the importance that mining has for us. 

Q: How can Lithium Valley move further into local processing? 

RT: Minas Gerais was, in a way, blessed with several important minerals in our territory. Here in the Iron Quadrangle, we have the presence of a large, important iron ore massif. In the Jequitinhonha Valley region and part of northern Minas Gerais, we have lithium. Today, in southern Minas Gerais, we have important, rare-earth reserves. We have niobium in Araxá. We have gold in the Paracatu region, close to Belo Horizonte as well. We have manganese. We have several minerals located here in Minas Gerais, making the state the main mining hub in the country and perhaps in the world.

The Lithium Valley has received a great deal of investment. Several companies are already operating and processing lithium, and we are very concerned with expanding the chain, so that we are not only exporting raw lithium. 

CBL has been extracting lithium since the 1980s. CBL is the first company outside China to produce battery-grade lithium. It has a very small production still, around 2,000 tonnes per month, and it is now receiving a US$55 million investment from the Indian group to triple this production. Our mines will reach 6,000 tonnes per month, which is extremely relevant, I think, for the whole world, to have this chain being developed outside China. 

Specifically, in the Lithium Valley, CBL, with this investment it is receiving, shows that we are ready to go beyond exploration. We are ready to process. We have technology for it. What we need is investors, people interested in coming to Brazil, making investments and processing this lithium here.

Q: Where are the strongest opportunities in renewable energy? 

RT: We have 99% of our energy matrix clean in the state, and we are the state that leads this position in the country. We have done very strong work in recent years to attract solar energy investments, especially in the north of Minas Gerais. 

There is a major opportunity, another important source of renewable energy that we have, which is biomethane. We can greatly expand biomethane production in several regions of the state. We have agribusiness production hubs that are an important matrix for biomethane production. 

All of this makes Minas Gerais today a fertile ground for attracting these investments in renewable energy, in plants and chains that need renewable energy in order to develop. It is interesting that in our iron ore chain, connecting this with mining, we have iron ore with a level of purity and a profile that is ready for green steel production. 

So what we now need is to connect the renewable energy chains with the iron ore that we have, so that we can deepen, encourage and produce, beyond renewable energy, products that carry this energy matrix with them. 

Q: What can international infrastructure investors expect from Minas Gerais? 

RT: Remember that this government has a characteristic: we only tender works, we only grant concessions, even when they are costly for the state, with money in the account. So this gives any investor coming to Minas Gerais a very high level of security, with the certainty that they will enter, win the tender, win the concession and receive payment. This is very important in order to provide a great deal of legal and financial certainty for the projects.

All of this will transform the reality of infrastructure in Minas Gerais. We are talking about around R$100 billion, between CAPEX and OPEX, that will be invested in Minas Gerais over the next 10 years, with a large part of these investments between 2027 and 2032, which I think will be the peak of the works in all these concession programmes. 

This is an opportunity for companies from all over the world to come and help. I even say it is in construction, in the reconstruction of Minas Gerais. All these investments will help rebuild the infrastructure of our state. 

Q: How are you increasing the visibility of these projects? 

RT: The Minas Gerais government has been doing a roadshow to promote these investments within the country. In the international missions that the governor carries out, we always try to have someone from infrastructure present to promote this pipeline of projects and show Brazil and the whole world the opportunities Minas Gerais has.  

Minas Gerais is very secure. There was an important milestone for legal certainty in infrastructure investments here in Minas Gerais, which was the creation of Artemig last year. Artemig is the transport regulatory agency, which will perform the same role that the ANTT performs at the federal level and that Artesp performs in São Paulo. 

So this was a very important step to bring more legal certainty to concession processes and concession contracts. So yes, we have to expand this promotion process, we have to expand this process of showing the projects we have, the projects that are already under way and the legal certainty these projects have. 

Q: Why should investors choose Minas Gerais as a hub? 

RT: Minas Gerais is a safe place, a peaceful place. We have some of the best public security in the country. We are in the centre of the country. Compared with São Paulo, we have labour with the same level of qualification, but at a lower cost. 

And we have, as I was going to say at the beginning, mining, we have agribusiness, we have a strong industry, we have steel production carried out here. So we have the most diverse chain possible, with the greatest possible opportunities. I think no state has as much as Minas Gerais has. 

There is enormous potential in the logistics sector and in e-commerce supply chains. The Extrema region alone accounts for 25% of the country’s e-commerce, considering only that microregion in southern Minas Gerais. 

We have opportunities in all sectors. We have a government today that is very open to discussing with the market, to sitting down with the market. And Invest Minas’ role is exactly that: to listen to and hear the entrepreneur’s demands and seek to solve them, whether at the Secretariat of Finance, to discuss and seek the best possible tax regime for the company, or in the environmental area, to unlock things and understand which legislation applies to that enterprise and help the entrepreneur seek licensing in the shortest possible timeframe 

Q: How will Invest Minas strengthen its relationship with China? 

RT: We have been working on this agenda for a few months, and we intend to carry it out at the end of April or beginning of May, to discuss these chains specifically. 

We are also discussing having a support point, a desk in China. This is something we are also studying here very carefully and with great care so that we can broaden and strengthen our relationship with China. We strongly believe that we have a lot of room to grow in this relationship and in this cooperation with Chinese companies and Chinese capital. 

Minas Gerais very much needs China to help us here in the development of our state. There is a great deal of opportunity for this, a great deal of room to expand participation here in all areas of our economy. 

I will use agribusiness as an example again. When we talk, for example, about grains and coffee, although we already have a consolidated market, we have many opportunities in these areas. We need more storage centres, we need to improve the logistics for moving this production, and all of this depends on intensive capital and on people interested in coming to invest and help expand and improve these chains.