Argentina has launched the Federal Mining Roundtable (Mesa Federal Minera), a new public-private coordination body for the mining sector, with industry and government participants projecting that mining exports could reach $20 billion by 2035 under the country's revised Glaciers Law framework.
The launch took place at the 11th San Juan International Mining Expo, on Argentina's Day of Mining. The opening was led by Karina Milei, Secretary General of the Presidency, with the governors of six mining-province jurisdictions in attendance: Raúl Jalil (Catamarca), Martín Llaryora (Córdoba), Carlos Sadir (Jujuy), Alfredo Cornejo (Mendoza), Marcelo Orrego (San Juan) and Maximiliano Pullaro (Santa Fe).
The new body replicates a public-private articulation model already in use for copper and lithium — two segments where institutional coordination has been credited with unlocking project announcements under Argentina's Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI).
RIGI Pipeline: $42 Billion in Mining Projects
Participants highlighted the legal and institutional framework built since late 2023 as the basis for the sector's repositioning, citing the RIGI and the revised Glaciers Law as the two primary instruments.
The RIGI currently holds mining projects worth a combined $42 billion, of which six have been approved — representing committed investments of more than $7.188 billion. Government and industry participants estimated that, under the Glaciers Law framework, mining exports could reach $20 billion by 2035 — a step toward closing the structural gap with neighboring Chile, where mining exports have anchored the country's foreign currency base for decades.
Karina Milei framed that gap directly: "Argentina has always had enormous potential in mining. However, through incompetence or the ideological positions of past governments, it never knew how to take advantage of it. To give one example: Chile, which has the same mountain range and the same resources we do, exported more than $50 billion in 2023. Argentina, by comparison, exported barely $4 billion — twelve times less."
Interior Minister Diego Santilli added that the administration had "laid the foundations for mining to become a state policy," arguing Argentina needed “to make the leap from being a country with mining to consolidating itself as a mining country.”
Provincial and Industry Backing
Roundtable participants emphasized macroeconomic stabilization and legal certainty as conditions for sustained investment in mining-province jurisdictions.
Orrego, the San Juan governor, said: "We have spent two long years of hard work positioning mining as one of the country's economic engines, with the federal government and provinces working together to restore legal certainty. Now we need companies to start executing their projects so this translates into genuine employment."
For Roberto Cacciola, president of the Argentine Chamber of Mining Companies (CAEM), three milestones underpin the sector's current trajectory: “Macroeconomic stabilization, the rollout of the RIGI and the modification of the Glaciers Law... This generated an ideal scenario for the arrival of investments and new projects. Now is the time for people and employment.”
Federal and Industry Participants
The federal delegation included Justice Minister Juan Bautista Mahiques; Mining Secretary Luis Lucero; Secretary of International Economic Relations Fernando Brun; Eduardo Menem, Undersecretary for Institutional Management; and Ignacio Lamothe, head of Argentina's Federal Investment Council (CFI).
Congressional attendees included Lower House Speaker Martín Menem; deputies Gabriel Bornoroni (Córdoba), Nicolás Fernando Mayoraz (Santa Fe) and Fernanda Ávila (Catamarca); and senators Bruno Olivera (San Juan), Flavio Fama (Catamarca) and Flavia Royón (Salta). The judiciary was represented by Juan Ignacio Pérez Curci of the Federal Court of Appeals of Mendoza.
The industry delegation, led by Cacciola — who is also president of Minera Santa Cruz, a Patagonian gold-silver mining company — included CAEM vice presidents representing Glencore Pachón (the subsidiary running Glencore's Pachón copper project in San Juan); Minera del Altiplano, a lithium operator in northern Argentina; Fortescue Argentina, the local arm of the Australian mining major; CEMINCOR, the Córdoba Mining Chamber; and GEMERA (the Mining Exploration Companies Group), represented by Michael Meding of Andes Corporación Minera.
Other participants included Verónica Nohara of Don Nicolás (a Santa Cruz gold producer), Franco Mignacco of the Jujuy Mining Chamber, José Luis Morea of the San Juan Mining Chamber, and representatives of mining-services firms and pollster Poliarquía.
Labor was represented by Héctor Laplace, secretary general of the Argentine Mining Workers Association (AOMA), and Gerardo Martínez, secretary general of the Construction Workers Union of the Argentine Republic (UOCRA).
Outlook
The Federal Mining Roundtable will operate alongside the existing copper and lithium roundtables, creating a third sectoral coordination forum at a moment when miners are weighing where — and under what fiscal and regulatory conditions — to commit the next tranche of capital. Whether that institutional architecture is enough to convert $42 billion in announced RIGI commitments into operating mines on the 2035 timeline depends less on the framework itself than on the regulatory consistency it is designed to lock in — and on how each provincial license round resolves the competing pressures of fiscal capture and investor predictability.