Decree No. 449/2025: Amendment to the Investment Regime for Mining Activities.
Mining Law Department Report | Decree No. 449/2025: Amendment to the Investment Regime for Mining Activities.
On July 7, 2025, Decree No. 449/2025 was published in the Official Gazette, introducing amendments to Law No. 24,196 on Mining Investments (hereinafter, the “LIM”, for its acronym in Spanish) and to Law No. 24,466, which created the National Geological Information Bank, as detailed below:
1- Simplification of the Content of the Fiscal Stability Certificate. Decree No. 449/2025 amends Section 10 of the LIM, which previously required that the Fiscal Stability Certificate includes the submission date of the feasibility study and a list of national, provincial, and municipal taxes in force at that time and applicable to the project. The Decree eliminates the requirement to list such applicable taxes in the Certificate.
According to the Decree’s recitals, the purpose of this change is to expedite the issuance of the Fiscal Stability Certificate, as compiling the list required the involvement of various tax authorities, whose delays in providing the information often hindered the issuance process. Moreover, the recitals state that this information is deemed “unnecessary” for issuing the certificate, as Decree No. 2686/93 (which regulates the LIM) provides that the certificates are declarative of the tax burden applicable to each eligible project (Section 8). Therefore, indicating the feasibility study submission date, suffices to determine which taxes apply.
2- Independent Technical Expert Report and Simplification of Annual Affidavit Review. Decree No. 449/2025 also amends Section 18 of the LIM by introducing the requirement to submit a new evaluation report, prepared by an independent technical professional, in addition to the pre-existing annual affidavit on the actual works and investments performed. Additionally, Section 26 of the LIM is amended to remove the authority of the Mining Secretariat to have the affidavits submitted by beneficiaries reviewed by third parties (the original text allowed such review to be conducted “by its own means or by any party it may designate.”)
According to the Decree’s recitals, these amendments aim to ensure more effective oversight, reduce potential distortions, and make the evaluation process simpler and more efficient for the enforcement authority.
3- National Geological Information Bank. The Decree also relocated the National Geological Information Bank within the structure of the executive branch. Section 1 of Law No. 24,466 originally placed the Bank under the organic and functional authority of the National Mining Secretariat. Decree No. 449/2025 reassigns the Bank to the Argentine Geological Mining Service (SEGEMAR, for its acronym in Spanish), a decentralized agency operating under the authority of the Mining Secretariat.
In the same vein, Decree 449/2025 also amends Section 27 of the LIM to reflect the change in the institutional structure: whereas it previously stated that the geological surface data provided by beneficiaries would be incorporated into the “Data Bank of the Mining Secretariat,” it now establishes that such data shall be incorporated into the “Data Bank managed by SEGEMAR”.
As stated in the Decree’s recitals, these changes seek to avoid overlapping functions between the Mining Secretariat (as the enforcement authority of the LIM), and SEGEMAR, which possesses the technical expertise to manage the National Geological Information Bank.
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