Marape says development forum for Porgera set

PRIME Minister James Marape says the development forum for the new Porgera mine will be held soon to discuss landowners benefit sharing.
Marape said in Port Moresby on Thursday that the Government remained committed to fixing all the legacy issues in Porgera.
He said the K100 million business development grant was in place to help restart business activities in Porgera.
“For the landowners, there is a benefit sharing forum or what we call the development forum is coming up very soon, the national government has made substantial commitment to clean up on the legacy issues we carry in Porgera for so many years.
“The retirement of full commitment to the MRE (Mineral Resources Enga) will be dispense with, that was K100 million that we year marked for them, and a business development grant of another K100 million to be brought into that bigger picture when we come to the development forum so that all businesses lost in the shutdown period and in preparation for re-startup, the local development forum will impress upon us on where this distribution will go.
“As well as government has factored in quite a substantial package — K700 million, all in all for a seven year period, we want to really fix those legacy issues,” he said.