Brazil iron ore reserves keep multiplying

Energy Resources (http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/)
Brazil iron ore reserves keep multiplying
Published: Sept. 2, 2010 at 10:53 AM

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Brazil further boosted its iron ore reserves with the announcement of a major new discovery of iron and phosphate deposits in the southwest state of Mato Grosso.
The new mineral discoveries place Brazil further in the forefront as a major exporter of iron ore and manufacturer of steel -- a key goal of President Luiz Inacio Lulza da Silva's economic regeneration program.
...
State Gov. Silval Barbosa said the discovery in Mato Grosso consisted of potential recoverable deposits of an estimated 11.5 billion tons of iron ore of 41 percent grade plus about 430 million tons of phosphates.

He said those estimates of the deposits make the new discoveries larger than the Carajas iron ore mine in the northern Para state.
Iron ore deposits in the Para mine have been variously estimated at 3 billion-7 billion tons -- the higher estimate cited by the controlling company, Vale.
The more conservative estimate was recorded by the national mining department before it was revised by Vale, a diversified mining multinational corporation quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.

Officials said although Carajas was dwarfed by the Mato Grosso discovery, its ore content was of a higher grade -- at least 67 percent.
Estimates of the Mato Grosso deposits are based on scientific surveys of about 26 square miles of land near the border with Bolivia.

The state government named the concession holder as GME4 mining exploration company.
...
Brazil, which has amassed cash on the strength of commodity exports, could well afford to inject capital investment into the project, analysts said.
Brazil has deployed vast resources into developing its deep-sea hydrocarbon deposits.

Iron ore development in Brazil already has potential major backers, including China.

China buys up to 24.6 million tons of Brazilian iron ore every month, most of it from Vale, the world's leading exporter of iron ore.

Iron ore trade is a lucrative trade for Brazil, which earned $12.35 billion from iron ore and concentrates exports in the first seven months of this year.

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Brazil = China

While culturaly very different, these two countries ( or continents ?) have quite a lot in common.

While Chine already bought commondities from Brazil, the volume and all other forms of cooperation are quite recent (not earlier then 2009).

China's economy is much larger but depends every time more on Brazil for food, the high quality commodities and now also oil.
What Brazil delivers is in volume and that is what China needs to keep on growing or even to maintain stable.

Since the Europe US crisis and the recent rapid growth of Brazil, China started to look at Brazil as a market for their products.

We have very much the impression that Brazil is China's most respected partner and they stay out of the mirror as much as they can.

With Brazil next to China they create a totally independant very fast growing South South world now with South Africa and other parts of Africa as an extention and a new bridge.

China's Guodian seeks partners in Brazil, Argentina

Cattle graze near wind turbines in Paracuru on the coast of Ceara State in northeastern Brazil, April 24, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Stuart Grudgings

LA JOLLA | Tue May 17, 2011 8:29am EDT

LA JOLLA (Reuters) - China's Guodian Corporation is looking for energy partners in Brazil and Argentina to build wind turbines and solar panels as it seeks to generate power in Latin America, an executive at the company said on Monday.

Guodian is one of China's five major state-run power generation companies.
It is increasingly targeting projects in countries such as Brazil, where China has overtaken the United States as the number-one trade partner.

"We are doing very initial feasibility studies, and we're looking for partners who can provide us with data that could save us a lot of time," Zhang Binquan, vice president at Guodian Technology and Environment Group, told Reuters.

He did not say how many solar panels or wind turbines might be commissioned, or the value of any potential deal.

"For the turbines, it depends on the quality of wind there, but we're talking about 5 megawatt units.
Big things, more than 60 meters (197 feet) tall," Binquan said, speaking on the sidelines of a Latin American energy conference in La Jolla.

Guodian has invested some $3 billion a year over the last couple of years in expanding its wind power sector, or about a third of its annual investment.

For years, China boosted growth in commodity producers such as Brazil and Argentina with its huge demand for raw materials.
More recently, it has pushed investments and state-backed loans aimed at expanding its access to those commodities while tapping demand from Latin America's growing consumer base.

Binquan said his unit, the Guodian Technology and Environment Group, was still eyeing an initial public offering in the near future, but gave no more details.
...

China deve investir US$ 8 bilhões no Brasil este ano
Publicação: 17 de Maio de 2011 às 00:00

Danilo Macedo
repórter da Agência Brasil

Brasília - O ministro do Desenvolvimento, Indústria e Comércio Exterior, Fernando Pimentel, disse ontem que o país deve receber este ano cerca de US$ 8 bilhões em investimento chinês. Com o crescimento expressivo das trocas comerciais entre os dois países, Pimentel afirmou que Brasil e China vão criar um grupo técnico para intensificar os negócios. “Vamos precisar de muita agilidade para tomar as decisões”, afirmou Pimentel que, ontem, teve alguns encontros com o ministro chinês do Comércio, Chen Deming, a quem se referiu como profundo conhecedor da economia brasileira e “disposto a resolver as questões”.

O ministro brasileiro disse que está satisfeito com o volume de exportações brasileiras para a China que, em 2010, ultrapassou os US$ 30 bilhões e deve, segundo ele, saltar para US$ 37 bilhões este ano. No entanto, explicitou sua preocupação no que se refere à concentração dos embarques. “Cerca de 80% do volume de exportações estão concentrados em apenas três produtos: minério de ferro, soja e petróleo”.
Chen Deming disse que “o Brasil tem muitos bons produtos, de boa qualidade, que o povo chinês não conhece”. Por isso, estimulou os empresários brasileiros, durante evento na Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI), a trabalhar melhor a divulgação dos produtos nacionais.

O presidente do Conselho Temático de Integração Internacional da CNI, Paulo Tigre, que participou do encontro com empresários chineses, disse que o Brasil precisa resolver gargalos, fazer uma reforma tributária e aumentar investimentos. “Temos que fazer nossa lição de casa, com menos burocracia e uma base educacional melhor. Precisamos diminuir os nossos custos”.

Highways open new trade routes in South America infrastructure projects “south-south” investment, developed world are bypassed, reflecting a broader shift in the global economy
Updated Thursday, January 27, 2011 11:11 am TWN, By Terry Wade, Reuters

Highways open new trade routes in South America
INAPARI, Peru -- New highways stretching across South America from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans will consolidate Brazil's role as the continent's leader and give it an alternative export outlet to Asia.

The roads won't redraw global trade patterns the way the Panama Canal did, but their impact could be considerable.

Peru says the highways — which will eventually provide direct links to five ports on its Pacific coast — will help it become a strategic trade route between two of the world's largest emerging markets: Brazil and China.

The first of three transcontinental routes that will run through Peru is about to open, and environmentalists are already warning of more deforestation in the Amazon basin.

The road is 3,379 miles long (5,438 km) — nearly 1,000 miles longer than the drive from Los Angeles to New York.
Another one, which links Brazil to Bolivia and Chile, opened in late 2010.

The infrastructure projects are a concrete example of “south-south” investment, in which traditional markets in the developed world are bypassed, reflecting a broader shift in the global economy.

“Brazil was always geared toward the Atlantic because it never had an efficient way to get to the Pacific and have a link with Asian countries.
It had to use the Panama Canal or the Strait of Magellan,” said Juan Carlos Zevallos, president of Peru's transport regulator, Ositran.

“Now there is an alternative.”

China has already displaced the United States as Brazil's top trading partner, with US$56 billion in trade flows in 2010, a 25-fold increase from 2000.

In the last five years, Peru and Chile have signed free-trade pacts with China, and its appetite for their minerals has made it their biggest trade partner alongside the United States.

Zevallos says the new infrastructure will alter the geopolitical landscape as China demands more food, minerals and oil from resource-rich South America. ...

“Brazil is getting a strategic presence in Peru for its orientation towards Asia ... and Peru is getting a historic geopolitical opportunity to link to the future of the world economy, which is Asia,” Zevallos said.

After decades of paying little attention to the rest of South America, Brazil is now asserting itself as the natural leader of a continent the United States, currently mired in economic uncertainty, has long viewed as its own backyard.

Odebrecht, a Brazilian firm that built part of the highway, plans to invest US$10 billion on infrastructure in Peru over the next five years on a range of power, water and road projects.

Brazil, which borders nine countries, says the chief aim of the road through Peru is to deepen economic ties in South America and that it remains to be seen if trade flows with Asia will be lifted.

“This is one of the important projects that was successfully done in the context of South American integration,” said Cesar Bonamigo of Brazil's embassy in Lima. ...

Economic Lift

Already, Peru's poor south, where the road from Brazil splits into three forks that run down to Pacific ports, has seen its economy improved by open pieces of the highway.

Jose Luis Bonifaz, an economist at the Universidad del Pacifico, says the highway will add US$1.5 billion, or 1 percentage point, to Peru's annual gross domestic product, which grew about 9 percent in 2010.

“Traffic has already surpassed what we projected for 2020 and 2021, so the economic impact is even greater,” he said.

He says the early trade opportunities favor Peruvians who will export vegetables and cement to northern Brazil, where consumers pay steep prices for goods trucked in thousands of miles from Sao Paulo state....

Still, beef from Brazil's commercial cattle herd — the world's largest — could go to China on trucks and boats.

Longer term, once the route in northern Peru opens, some cargo for the electronics manufacturing plants in Manaus that use components from Asia could be routed through Peru, said Bonamigo of Brazil's embassy. ...
Copyright © 1999 – 2011 The China Post.
Back to Story (http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/reuters/2011/01/27/289267/Highways-open.htm)

Investimentos chineses no Brasil podem ganhar força
Publicação: 15 de Maio de 2011 às 00:00

Elaine Patricia Cruz
Repórter da Agência Brasil

São Paulo - Empresários chineses e brasileiros se reuniram na última sexta-feira, em São Paulo, para discutir oportunidades de ampliação dos investimentos chineses no país. O encontro foi um desdobramento da visita da presidenta da República, Dilma Rousseff, à China no mês passado. O próximo encontro está previsto para amanhã, em Brasília, quando será assinado um memorando de entendimentos entre os dois países.

Segundo o presidente da Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI), Robson de Andrade, as primeiras reuniões com os empresários chineses demonstraram que eles estão interessados em investir no Brasil principalmente nas áreas de agronegócios e no setor de minérios, mas a intenção é fazer com que eles invistam também nas áreas de infraestrutura e em indústrias de base tecnológica.

“O que nós queremos é que eles venham investir em manufatura, porque queremos aumentar nossas exportações para a China de produtos com valor agregado, de mão de obra e tecnologia”, afirmou Andrade.
De acordo com ele, os empresários chineses já manifestaram interesse também em aeroportos, ferrovias, rodovias e em empreendimentos voltados para as Olimpíadas e a Copa do Mundo.

Segundo Mauricio Borges, presidente da Agência Brasileira de Promoção de Exportações e Investimento (Apex-Brasil), a expectativa é que sejam fechados acordos também na área de tecnologia.
“Eles estão ainda conhecendo e buscando parcerias porque eles veem o Brasil como oportunidade não só em minérios, mas também em tecnologia”.

Para o presidente da Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (Fiesp), Paulo Skaf, a ampliação de investimentos entre os dois países é necessária, mas o Brasil deve definir as suas prioridades e interesses para “enquadrar os interesses da China a isso”.

Atualmente, segundo Skaf, o Brasil exporta basicamente minérios e soja aos chineses e importa manufaturados, o que traz prejuízos ao país.
“Essa relação não é boa para o Brasil.
Temos que buscar um equilíbrio maior”, defendeu. Outro problema, destacou Skaf, é o câmbio: a moeda brasileira está sobrevalorizada, enquanto a chinesa está desvalorizada. “Isso rouba a nossa competitividade”, afirmou. “Queremos vender manufatura, agregar valor aos produtos e gerar empregos no Brasil”.

Liu Zuo Zhang, diretor-geral da China Investiment and Promotion Agency (Cipa), organismo de promoção comercial vinculado ao Ministério do Comércio chinês, disse que uma das intenções da vinda de empresários chineses ao Brasil é de “incentivar o investimento mútuo” entre os países.
A China é o maior parceiro comercial do Brasil desde abril de 2009.
O comércio entre os dois países passou de US$ 2,3 bilhões em 2000 para US$ 56,3 bilhões no ano passado.

EU's Van Rompuy looks to China on debt crisis

Sat, May 14 2011

EU's Van Rompuy looks to China on debt crisis

Fri May 13, 2011 10:02am EDT

* EU's Van Rompuy to discuss debt issues in China (/places/china)

* Three-day trip will also cover business, trade

* EU-China trade valued at 400 bln euros, rising rapidly

By Luke Baker (http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=luke.baker&)

BRUSSELS, May 13 (Reuters) - The European Union's most senior official travels to China next week for talks on the euro zone (http://www.reuters.com/subjects/euro-zone ) debt crisis, trade and business, with Beijing playing a critical role in buying distressed European debt.

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council that represents the EU's 27 member states, will visit Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai during the May 15-18 trip and hold talks with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, among others.

The visit, at the invitation of the Chinese, coincides with a deterioration in Europe's 18-month sovereign debt crisis, with growing concerns Greece (/places/greece) could be forced to restructure its debts and Ireland and Portugal also under pressure. [ID:nLDE74A16A]

China signalled last month it was ready to buy more debt from the euro zone's weaker states, dubbed the periphery, in a move to help stabilise the bloc. There are no precise figures, but China has said it has bought billions of euros of debt.

"On the Chinese side, they are asking for some information about the euro zone crisis and how things are developing," a spokesman for Van Rompuy said of the visit.

"They are investing a lot of money in the euro and in the peripheral countries, so they are very interested in that. They are interested in what we have done and what our vision is."

Last May, the European Union established a 440 billion euro temporary mechanism involving emergency loans to help handle the region's sovereign debt problems, with that facility to be replaced by a 500 billion permanent fund from mid-2013.

Over the past year, Greece has been granted 110 billion euros in bilateral loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund, Ireland (places/ireland ) has agreed a 85 billion euro bailout package and Portugal is to receive 78 billion euros of aid soon.

But there are few signs the measures are having an impact, with all three countries still needing to undergo extensive structural and fiscal reforms before they are likely to return to growth and be able to raise financing in the markets.

From China's point of view, it is likely to want reassurances that its investments are sound and that the prospect of debt restructurings, which could force a sharp writedown in the value of its holdings, remains slim.

Van Rompuy may also discuss Greece, where privatisation is a central plank in the EU/IMF restructuring plan. Athens needs to raise around 50 billion euros from privatisations in the coming three years, but first needs to find viable buyers for the assets it will put on the block.

ARMS EXPORTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Aside from the debt crisis, Van Rompuy is expected to focus discussions on business, trade and investment, with the EU's raising of duties on an array of Chinese imports prompting retaliatory measures from Beijing. [ID:nL3E7FI08A]

From the European Union's perspective, China has a way to go to improve the climate for business and investment, and it wants reassurances on piracy and intellectual property rights, particularly in the pharmaceuticals industry. [ID:nLR352231]

EU-China trade in goods was valued at nearly 400 billion euros last year, up more than 30 percent from 2009. Trade in services and foreign direct investment are also growing.

"The focus will be on the need for a two-way street for trade and investment," said an EU official. "We'll also emphasize the need to maintain access to raw materials and enforce intellectual property."

China has in the past called for the European Union to end its embargo on arms exports, in place since the Chinese government crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Britain and other major EU arms exporters have pushed for an end to the ban, and Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, suggested last year it was time to drop it, but opposition remains stronger in the bloc.

A spokesman said Van Rompuy would not raise the issue but would listen carefully to China's position if it broached the topic. He added that Van Rompuy could raise China's record on human rights "at a certain moment" if it was appropriate.