According to the statistics provided by Brazil's National Union of the Industry of Extraction of Iron and Base Metals (Sinferbase), in September this year the country's biggest miner Vale's iron ore export volume totaled 24.36 million mt, increasing by 1.30 percent compared to the same month of 2012. In the first nine months, Vale's iron ore exports fell by 3.68 percent year on year to 186.55 million metric tons.

Meanwhile, in September this year Vale's iron ore sales in its domestic market amounted to 1.49 million mt, increasing by 24.12 percent year on year. In the first nine months of this year, Vale's iron ore sales in its domestic market amounted to 11.52 million mt, up 8.77 percent compared with the same period of the preceding year.