Vale CEO to Cut Debt by End 2017

Previous guidance $15 billion by mid-2017; focus on margins rather than volume.

Vale Chief Executive Officer Murilo Ferreira said on Wednesday the firm was seeking to cut its debt to between $15 billion and $17 billion by the end of 2017, a slight revision of previous guidance.

Along with the rest of the mining industry, Vale was hard hit by a collapse in commodity prices last year, but for Vale the impact was made worse by the collapse of a dam in Brazil, part of the Samarco venture it jointly operates with BHP Billiton (BHPLF) .

In its Q3 results statement in October, Vale reported a profit and its net debt had fallen by $1.5 billion from the second quarter to $25.97 billion and Vale's guidance pointed to a net debt cut to $15 billion by mid-2017, primarily through asset sales.

Speaking at a Bloomberg conference on Wednesday, the CEO also said he was shifting the focus to increasing profit margins rather than higher production.

This reflects a trend in an industry that can no longer rely on simply producing more from increasingly depleted and low quality assets to boost shareholder value.

Reporting by Eric Onstad and Barbara Lewis