The bicameral Congress has two main tasks before the end of 2026: the 2027 budget law and the artisanal and small-scale mining law (ASM). Both have deadlines: the budgetary one because the regulations establish a deadline until November 30, and the mining one because the validity of the Comprehensive Mining Formalization Registry (Reinfo) expires in December.
The first issue is already underway and there would be no problem because the congressmen will begin to taste the honey that comes with managing investment projects and the political – and other – benefits that these can bring them. The cumbersome problem involves the ASM law, in which there is a big question mark about the definition and the deadlines for its approval.
The outlook is worrying if we take into account that, with the excuse of the new legislative process, congressmen from different groups have floated the possibility of extending the validity of the Reinfo for at least six months in order to have more time to debate the formula for the ASM law.
What parliamentarians allege is that the new flow for the approval of laws is slower, and for this they use the approval of the delegation of powers as an example. Under their own estimates, all of November will be focused on carrying out the 2027 budget law – whose deadline is the 30th – and only in December could they concentrate their efforts on the MAPE law. The other problem, according to what has been reported from the benches, is that the legislature ends on December 15 and, apparently, they are not willing to an extension that forces them to work during their first parliamentary Christmas.
Extending the validity of the Reinfo implies extending the cloak of impunity that this represents for illegal miners who have been operating in areas such as Pataz, Loreto or Madre de Dios. What Congress intends is to allow them to continue operating in a scenario in which attention – between January and March 2027 – will be focused on the El Niño phenomenon, and when the new mayors and governors will be taking power, and this seems to be the perfect combo for illegal operations to continue at full speed and without any control.
Congress needs to declare the Energy and Mines Commission of the Chamber of Deputies in permanent session to establish a rigorous study of the Executive’s project. The same government, the author of the initiative, must guarantee that the final text is defined in the Lower House, so that the Senate has all of December to make the necessary review and adjustments, so that the Reinfo chapter is closed before December 31.
In the midst of this debate, we must be careful not to allow the left-wing groups – those that include several representatives of informal miners – to infiltrate interests that border on the illegal. If we do not establish a clear position on this issue, in 2027 we will repeat the scenario of 2026, in which it is estimated that gold exports of illegal origin would exceed those of legal origin for the first time.
