Campos Belos lies in a region with a mixture of cerrado vegetation and the semi-arid caatinga.

The main economic activity is cattle raising (55,700 head in 2006), but it was minerals that brought the first settlers to this region.

In recent years Campos Belos has become a commercial center for a vast area taking in the northeast of Goiás and the southeast of Tocantins.

The state university of Goiás (UEG)opened a campus in Campos Belos in 2000, initially to offer a course in Letters.

Growth was substantial in the decade of the 1990s since the city began to supply the population of the new state of Tocantins, which did not have an adequate commercial infrastructure.