Celebrated PNGs 39th Independence Day with the PNG Mining Community in Kalgoolie Goldfields, WA last weekend. It coincided with the Launching of the Goldfields PNG Association. I learnt that a good number of Papua New Guineans are working there, and a good number of them are in middle management positions and operating some of the largest mines in the world. Some of the pictures of the Super pit open cut mine are shown below. I was impressed that we could run and operate our own mines back here in PNG. We have some of the highly qualified and most experienced Papua New Guineans who could help run our mines. One of the challenges I left with them is the corruption that occurs in the extractive industry. The extractive industry in PNG is a sector cloaked in secrecy and dominated by large multi-national corporations. The complexity of transactions and the technical nature of the industry further make it difficult to understand. We really don’t know whether tax evasion and predatory practices are rife in the extractive industry. We really don’t know whether the country and its people are actually benefiting from the extraction of our natural resources. Many of you are working in that industry and we would need your expertise to detect some of these things. On 19th March 2014, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Board approved PNG’s application for EITI Candidate status at its meeting in Oslo. Papua New Guinea will now implement the EITI Standard, which will ensure more transparency of payments to the government from the oil, gas and mining companies in the country. It is hoped that once this is implemented, it would introduce transparency into the industry.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 05:46:16 +0000
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