The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a long-term, multi-stakeholder process whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for voluntary use by organizations reporting on the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their activities, products and services.

The 2002 GRI Guidelines are a framework for reporting on an organization's economic, environmental and social performance and are considered by GRI to be applicable to organizations in all sectors of commerce, in all regions of the world. The 2002 Guidelines are supplemented by sectoral guidelines that GRI has developed for specific industry sectors. Sectoral guidelines were published for the Mining and Metals sector in February 2005.

For the first time, we have developed a GRI Index for our 2004 Annual Report to Shareholders, our 2004 Social Responsibility Report and our 2004 Health, Safety and Environmental Report to determine and communicate the extent to which these reports collectively reflect the GRI principles and core indicators. The Company invites feedback from users of our corporate reports regarding the usefulness of the GRI Index.

To view the GRI Index, please visit www.valeinco.com/development/reports/gri/.