MRDC does not decide for landowners

 THE Mineral Resources Development Company (MRDC) does not decide on how to invest landowner funds, managing director Augustine Mano says.

He said yesterday that MRDC would only make recommendations and it would be then up to the boards of the landowner companies to decide.

“We are simply a management company,” he said in response to criticisms from landowners and leaders at a two-day state and landowner issues meeting in Port Moresby.

Mano was not at the meeting, which was organised to discuss matters relating to the PNG LNG Project. MRDC are managers, and then you have trusts,” he told The National. 

“The trusts are where all the chairmen and directors are. “All these (investment) decisions are made by the trustees, not MRDC. 

“We make recommendations, just like any management, and they make all these decisions to invest in major infrastructure projects such as hotels.

“The landowners there – like in Kutubu, Moran, Gobe, OkTedi, all of these – they make those decisions, not MRDC.” 

Mano said he would have explained everything had he been present at the meeting.

“It’s a pity I wasn’t there to put it right to them,” he said.

“I’m not scared to say that the decisions we made to invest in hotels, (like) Star Mountain (in Port Moresby) are board decisions made by leaders, governors, secretaries.”

He said the boards had the right to decide and the MRDC’s role was to effect those decisions.

He said it was unfair to accuse the MRDC of making those decisions.

He said they had an investment committee in MRDC, which could also look at the decisions.