ANTT combs Carajás and demands explanations from Vale regarding R$ 1.16 billion

Brasília ANTT (National Land Transport Agency) combs the assets linked to the Carajás Railway, operated by Vale, and demands explanations about the origin of R$ 1.16 billion in investments that the mining company claims to have made in the railway. The agency wants to identify which works these expenses refer to and check whether they were correctly included in the concession account.

The review of values ​​is a sensitive issue in the concession, because the investments recognized by the government directly influence the settlement of Vale's obligations in the railway concession contracts.

The company has payments and works to deliver to the government, but it also defends the recognition of investments it has already made to reduce the amount owed. What ANTT accepts at this conference is included in the calculation of the settlement and may change the balance of the company's obligations.

According to information obtained by Folha, the amount in question is linked to the accounting balance of 384 records made by the company, such as payments linked to interventions that would have been made on the Carajás Railway. The point to clarify is which Vale projects these goods came from.

This check is linked to the early renewal of concessions for two railways. ANTT analyzes the contracts for Carajás and the Vitória-Minas Railway, signed in 2020, during the Jair Bolsonaro administration, and extended until 2057. The renewal established payments and investments and provided for the checking of the assets and accounts of the two railways.

During the Lula government, discussions about the values ​​and obligations of the contracts were reopened, because the government understood that the agreement benefited the mining company and charged more to renew the concessions.

In December 2024, Vale, the Union and ANTT created the general bases for an agreement with a maximum global payment of up to R$11 billion by Vale, involving the review of old investments, changes to works and other obligations.

The negotiations resulted in the advance of R$4 billion to the Union. Negotiations at the TCU (Federal Audit Court), however, ended without a definitive agreement, according to the Ministry of Transport, and discussions on the other points continue.

It is in this process that ANTT is checking the investments that Vale claims to have made in Carajás.

Vale declared to Folha that it "reaffirms its commitment to the guidelines and general bases for optimizing railway concession contracts, established in the agreement of December 30, 2024, and continues to fully comply with its contractual obligations".

The survey of the asset base, said the company, "is an ordinary obligation of the concession contracts and its technical investigation is the responsibility of ANTT". The company stated that it does not comment on ongoing administrative processes.

ANTT declared that the work "is a step foreseen in the concession contract" that "allows us to verify which assets are linked to the railway and how they should be considered in the concession asset base" of the railway.

"The records are neither recognized nor discarded automatically. ANTT applies the defined technical criteria so that the calculation of contractual obligations has an auditable basis and adheres to the rules of the contract. The conclusion will depend on the analysis of the records and their evidentiary documentation", said the agency, adding that the case is "in the technical discussion phase, so it is not possible to anticipate possible results at this time".

The Carajás Railway crosses Pará and Maranhão, connecting the iron ore producing region of Carajás to the Ponta da Madeira terminal, in São Luís. It is one of the main routes used by Vale to take its production to the coast and export it, in addition to transporting other cargo and passengers.

Vitória a Minas, included in the same negotiation, connects mining and industrial production areas from Minas Gerais to Espírito Santo. The charge for R$1.16 billion, however, is concentrated in Carajás records.

To check the expenses, ANTT needs to separate the railway's common assets from those installed in other Vale expansion projects, linked to the S11D mineral exploration complex.

There are works such as the Southeast Pará Railway Branch, measuring approximately 101 kilometers, which was built to connect the S11D mine, in Canaã dos Carajás, to the railway in the Parauapebas region. These works were carried out to increase ore transport capacity. What is being discussed now is how much of them can be recognized in the railway contract and how this value should be calculated.

Vale hired the auditor Ernst & Young to analyze the case. When dealing with the matter internally, ANTT demanded "overwhelming evidence" that the questioned records belonged to the railway concession, "under penalty of exclusion from the regulatory asset base".

On October 1st, Vale provided additional information about the location of the assets, asset identification and links with projects. In the spreadsheet submitted, 67 records, with a remaining balance of approximately R$92 million, appear classified as belonging to other projects and may be subject to separate assessment from the railway. The information remains under analysis.

The divergence over the value of investments in the railway has spanned more than a decade. In 2014, ANTT examined a request from Vale to recognize approximately R$11.58 billion in the S11D railway expansion. In that analysis, it maintained the value at around R$4.487 billion, after accepting a one-off increase, and asked for justifications regarding other expenses.

In 2022, ANTT technicians once again challenged the thesis that it would be enough to accept the expenses recorded by the company. Vale defended the recognition of expenses, while the agency maintained that the contract required verification of values ​​and evaluation rules.

The Carajás Railway, which covers the longest railway distance in passenger transport in the country, reached its 40th anniversary this month with a total of 16 million passengers transported in its history.

After the railway broke a record in total users in 2024, with 423 thousand, Carajás closed last year with 419 thousand, and the prospect of growth in the coming years.