The Carajas Project

This enormous development is one of several projects, taking place in the Amazon area. This project covers a gigantic area in Brazil's state of Para, which is 400, 000 square km. and is about the same size as California. The idea behind these projects is to show off and use the Amazon's huge mineral reserves and make Brazil a powerful, rich country to compete with the great western countries and particularly also to be the most powerful country in South America. These developments cost a lot of money and the project 'GRANDE CARAJAS' had a budget of 70 billion US dollars, which was spent on the development of this project. The 70 billion dollars we are talking about is the normal going price for these large project developments. In 1994 project 'GRANDE CARAJAS' had a record year producing 100 million tonnes of iron ore. The ore extracted by the 'GRANDE CARAJAS' also contains manganese, copper, nickel, gold, bauxite (aluminium) and tin. This facility is so big it built its own hydra electric dam to generate enough electricity for the extraction of all the above metals. As well as a dam the company behind this project also invested in a 900km railway, connecting this facility to the nearest port at Sau Luis Marahnhao. At this port the minerals would be shipped out to many parts of the world. This mining project employs 1 million people and because of this large number of employed people the Brazilian government is in favour of foreign investors because they gain by gradually being able to raise taxes and become a MEDC (more economically developed country).