Dept develops policies for sector

THE Department of Mineral Policy and Geohazards Management has developed policies to support the mineral resources sector, department secretary Harry Kore says.
During a welcome event for new Mining vice-minister Peter Sapia in Port Moresby on Monday, Kore said that he looked forward to introducing the Mining Act review.
“We have the geothermal policy, we have drafted the mining policy, the off-shore mining policy, sustainable development mining policy, mining involuntary resettlement policy and the mining project rehabilitation and closure policy,” he said.
“We have been doing the review of the Mining Act for quite some time (and) submitted it to Cabinet.
“We have made amendments to the MRA Act 2018, we have made a lot of changes to the Mining Act review.
“It will address issues that people have been talking about in the mining sector.” Kore said under the Mining Act review, all geological and mineral data from existing mining projects were to be put into a repository held by the Mineral Resources Authority (MRA).
“This is real-time live data,” he said.
“We (can) know how much minerals has been taken out of the country, what has been sold, what sort of benefits that we will get.
“At the moment, we just rely on our industry partners, they just send us whatever data that we needed.
“So it is better for us to know what is going out.”