Ecuador Decreto Ejecutivo 435 — Reapertura del Catastro Minero Nacional y creación del CONIM (Comité Nacional de Integridad del Sector Minero)

Mechanism

Decreto Ejecutivo 435 operates on two parallel tracks.

Track 1 — CONIM (inter-ministerial integrity architecture). The decree establishes a permanent, cabinet-level coordination body with a narrow but operationally significant mandate: develop annual mining-sector risk assessments, publish annual risk reports, formulate Annual Strategic Action Plans (Planes Estratégicos de Acción), and coordinate joint enforcement operations against illegal mining. Membership spans the full security-financial-extractive inter-agency perimeter: Secretaría General de Integridad Pública (chair), Ministerio de Energía y Minas, Ministerio del Ambiente y Energía, Ministerio del Interior, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Ministerio de Gobierno, Ministerio de Transporte y Obras Públicas, plus SRI (tax authority) and UAFE (anti-money-laundering intelligence unit). The SRI + UAFE participation is structurally significant: it operationalises the financial-intelligence and anti-money-laundering enforcement track against illegal-mining revenue flows estimated above USD 1 billion per year. CONIM's first Plan de Acción Estratégico was due by 23 December 2024.

Track 2 — Cadastre reopening mandate. The decree orders ARCOM to update and reopen the Catastro Minero Nacional within six months from the signing date (deadline: 23 April 2025). The cadastre had been closed since 2018 — a seven-year freeze that blocked new concession issuance and created a backlog of project-development pipeline delays. ARCOM sequenced the reopening in three phases:

• Phase 1 (June 2025): Small-scale non-metallic mining
• Phase 2 (September 2025): Metallic mining (copper, gold, silver, molybdenum)
• Phase 3 (End 2025): All remaining regimes (artisanal, large-scale, industrial)

ARCOM's enabling administrative instrument is Resolución ARCOM 005/25, which operationalises the reopening mandate under Decreto 435's authority.

Structural position in the Ecuadorian mining-policy stack

Decreto 435 is the foundational executive instrument anchoring the entire post-2018 Ecuadorian mining-FDI revival. The register previously held three downstream instruments that all derive authority from or are conditioned on Decreto 435:

• 2025-12-31-ecuador-decreto-273-mining-regulation-reform — the Reglamento General a la Ley de Minería overhaul (sliding royalty, 100% self-power mandate, tightened timelines) operates under a cadastre that Decreto 435 reopened.
• 2026-02-26-ecuador-ley-organica-fortalecimiento-sectores-estrategicos-mineria-energia — the statutory anchor for Decreto 273, which drew its legislative momentum from the mining-FDI revival that Decreto 435 initiated.
• 2026-03-13-us-ecuador-agreement-reciprocal-trade — the US-Ecuador reciprocal trade deal, in which mining-sector access is a key deliverable conditioned on Ecuador's demonstrated ability to attract and protect mining FDI (post-cadastre reopening).

IMF-EFF conditionality link

The cadastre reopening mandated by Decreto 435 is one of Ecuador's documented commitments under the IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme. Coverage in Ecuadorian media and the IMF's 2025-2026 Article IV consultations explicitly identifies the cadastre reopening as a mining-sector structural benchmark, making Decreto 435 a conditionality-aligned instrument alongside the Ley Orgánica and Decreto 273 overhaul.

Affected FDI pipeline

The unlock of the cadastre activates or accelerates investment timelines across Ecuador's major undeveloped mining assets:

• Cascabel (SolGold, ~15 Moz AuEq, copper porphyry) — exploration advancement
• Cangrejos (Lumina Gold, ~11 Moz Au equivalent) — feasibility acceleration
• Loma Larga (INV Metals, ~3 Moz Au) — permitting and social-licensing context
• Curipamba (Adventus/Salazar, copper-gold VMS) — development advancement

Ecuador's state miner ENAMI EP is also directly affected through the cadastre reopening's effect on small-scale and artisanal concession issuance.

Anti-illegal-mining operational dimension

Ecuador's illegal mining sector is dominated by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), primarily syndicates with links to Colombian and Venezuelan organized crime operating in alluvial gold zones (provinces of Esmeraldas, Sucumbíos, Orellana, Napo, Zamora Chinchipe). Revenue estimates exceed USD 1 billion per year. CONIM's coordination mandate — particularly the SRI + UAFE link to financial-intelligence architecture — is a structural countermeasure, complementing the Fuerza Pública enforcement track under Interior/Defense.

LatAm cadastre-reform cluster

Decreto 435 peers structurally to a cluster of LatAm executive instruments addressing cadastre governance, state coordination, and illegal-mining as supply-chain-integrity instruments:

• PE Decreto Supremo REINFO (Perú, artisanal-mining registry and formalization)
• CO Decreto 0977/2024 Distritos Mineros (Colombia, strategic mining districts)
• BO Ley YLB (Bolivia, state-capture of lithium upstream)

Downstream implications

• Reopening the cadastre removes the structural constraint on Ecuador's greenfield exploration pipeline; concession issuance in metallic mining (Sept 2025) directly unlocks early-stage exploration permitting.
• CONIM's SRI + UAFE integration creates a financial-intelligence perimeter around mining revenue; investors in formal mining should benefit from reduced illegal-competition overhang.
• The IMF-EFF alignment means cadastre-related conditionality will be monitored in quarterly programme reviews, creating an external discipline on backsliding.
• Phase 2 (metallic mining, Sept 2025) is the materially significant unlock for COPX- and PICK-adjacent copper/gold projects; delay beyond that date would be a negative signal.

Open questions

• CONIM annual risk-assessment for 2025 has not been publicly released as of the Q1 2026 reporting cycle — watch for publication.
• Phase 3 cadastre reopening (all regimes, end 2025) timeline has not been confirmed as complete in public ARCOM reporting.
• Whether the CONIM architecture will be incorporated into the statutory mining-reform framework of the Ley Orgánica (2026-02-26) or remain purely executive-decree-based.