Prime minister attempts to stop tribunal

PRIME Minister Sir Michael Somare yesterday filed an urgent application to stop the leadership tribunal from convening tomorrow to hear allegations of misconduct in office against him, The National reports.

The application was filed yesterday by the prime minister’s legal team, headed by overseas counsel Ian Molloy.

Documents relating to the application were then immediately served on the Ombudsman Commission and the public prosecutor’s office yesterday afternoon.

Acting Public Prosecutor Jim Wala Tamate had confirmed receiving the documents.

Although removed as the public prosecutor, he would remain in office until March 17 and may have a last say in appointing the leading prosecuting lawyer for the case.

Tamate said the office would support the ombudsman and fight the application when the tribunal starts its session tomorrow.

Tamate said a team of public prosecutors, headed by senior prosecutor Kaluwin Pondros, was ready to present to the tribunal its case relating to the allegations that Sir Michael had failed to report on his annual returns for a specified period.

Yesterday’s application was to stop the tribunal from proceeding until a Supreme Court application (of the originating summons) filed last Saturday, questioning the constitutionality of the Ombudsman Commission’s referral of Sir Michael to the public prosecutor, was heard and ruled upon.

The matter came before Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia on Monday and was adjourned to next Monday.

In his original originating summons of October 2008, the prime minister had alleged that former chief ombudsman Ila Geno had made certain important decisions concerning him and his referral without involving a properly constituted quorum (meeting) of the commissioners as required by the Organic Law.

Meanwhile, all three members of the tribunal are expected to fly into Port Moresby today in preparation for tomorrow’s start to the hearing of charges against the prime minister.

 

Back to that gold in the PNG hills

By Barry FitzGerald in Business Day 

March 7, 2011

There's plenty of potential in picking up where the Mount Kare alluvial gold rush left off.
IT HAS been a case of back to the future for Stephen Promnitz, chief executive of the south-east Asia and south-west Pacific copper-gold explorer Indochine Mining (ASX: IDC). Indochine raised $20 million in its December float on the strength of a big copper-gold exploration tenement package in little-explored Cambodia as its main go.
The float attracted the backing of the mighty fund manager BlackRock and hedge fund Och-Ziff as substantial shareholders, with holdings of 7 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. Drilling gets under way at the Cambodia properties later this year, but in the meantime Promnitz has secured an option for Indochine over the Mount Kare gold project in Papua New Guinea.
As a young geologist with CRA (since merged with Rio Tinto), Promnitz witnessed at Mount Kare one of the great alluvial gold rushes of the modern era.
The 1988-89 rush left an impression.
 ''It was the most astounding thing I have ever seen,'' Promnitz told Garimpeiro.
''There was more gold than you could poke a stick at. So much so that I thought I would never be looking for gold again.
''The locals were shaking gold nuggets from the roots of the grass. Some of the nuggets were the size of goose eggs. It was on for young and old.
''We saw the place go from having nobody there to having more than 6000 people with picks and shovels in the space of six weeks.''
Gold was well understood in the region, given Barrick's 25-million-ounce Porgera deposit some 20 kilometres away. Porgera hadn't been developed by then but it had been a gold exploration project for 30 years. What eventually got Porgera into production was the discovery there of Zone 7, with its amazing grade of 40 grams of gold a tonne.
In the end, the locals who swarmed onto the alluvial patch at Mount Kare plucked more than 1 million ounces of gold from thick, sticky clay. The alluvial gold eventually petered out, but the underlying hard-rock potential remained. And there was plenty of work for everyone at Porgera.
Books can and have been written on the Mount Kare alluvial gold rush. Fascinating stuff it is too, as you would expect: spivs and conmen were quick on the scene; they love a gold rush as much as anybody else.
For today's purposes, all we need to know is that CRA eventually walked away from Mount Kare, with the forced abandonment of its Panguna copper mine as attacks by secessionist rebels over on Bougainville Island encouraged the exit from all things PNG for the company. (Rio's listed subsidiary Bougainville Copper still harbours ambitions of returning Panguna to production.)
Canadian groups secured title to Mount Kare and in the 1990s and the opening years of the new century, they set about assessing the hard-rock potential of the site.
The Canadians outlined, under their national reporting requirements, a 1.7 million ounce hard-rock gold resource (1.9 million ounces if you give the silver in the mineralisation a gold equivalent value).
But the 2008 global financial crisis clipped their wings and Mount Kare ended up for sale in the hands of a liquidator. Indochine has now secured an option over the deposit in a deal with the private Aussie-PNG syndicate that acquired Mount Kare from the liquidator, with an initial payment of $4 million made by Indochine last week.
Full details of the expected shares-and-cash deal that will give Indochine control of Mount Kare are expected to be released within 21 days or so. When that happens, stand by for a re-rating of the stock.
At Friday's closing price for the stock of 30¢ a share, Indochine was being valued at $82 million. Compare that to the fancy market values of any number of ASX-listed West African gold explorers with similar-sized projects to Mount Kare under their belt and you'll see why the re-rating potential is there.
PNG can be a hairy place, as can West Africa. But if Garimpeiro had to be dropped into either of them, PNG would (now) be his choice. He says now because of the $20 billion being pumped in to developing PNG's gas export business by Exxon Mobil and others. It is transformational stuff for PNG in terms of all the things that will make the country less difficult to get things done. Things such as telecommunications, air services, and technical and legal support, not to mention the new casino and hotels that are going up in Port Moresby.
Once the Indochine option over Mount Kare is bedded down, the plan is to start work on an ASX-compliant resource. The estimate by the Canadians was largely in the drill-indicated category, so the swap from their assessment to one that suits local reporting requirements should be plain sailing.
More to the point is that the Canadians' assessment was based on a gold price of $US300 an ounce and a silver price of $US5.50 an ounce. Both metals now trade at multiples of those prices, so you would have to think there is now potential to add a sizeable open-cut resource to the underground resource.
It is also worth noting that while ''nearology'' is a dangerous practice, Mount Kare does have similar geology and geological setting to the Porgera deposit. Whether or not Mount Kare too has a Zone 7 that will be uncovered by further exploration remains to seen.
What is known is that the current Canadian resource estimate (it has a high-grade portion of 740,000 ounces of gold in 4.6 million tonnes of material grading 5g/tonne gold) is good enough for Indochine to get working on a feasibility study of Mount Kare's development.

Huli wigmen for world music festival

HULI wigmen dancers will have a chance to showcase PNG culture at this weekend’s world music festival in Adelaide, Australia, The National reports.

The Huli Duna Cultural Group rehearsing in Port Moresby for the world music festival in Adelaide, Australia, starting this Friday.

The Huli dancers from Southern Highlands have been invited by organisers, a first of its kind, to add colour and a different music flavour with their kundu drums.
The biennial music festival attracts some of the world’s popular rock and contemporary bands.
The Huli Duna Cultural Group, consisting of men, women and children, will leave for Adelaide tomorrow for the March 11-14 festival.
Markham Galut, who is the coordinator for the trip, said: “We are there to showcase our huge cultural heritage.
“We want to see if we can feature, blend and promote PNG culture to the world music scene.”
Galut, a freelance artist, dancer and musician, has been working closely with David Brady, a Melbourne-based musician, who has been promoting PNG string-band music, especially Tolai rock le­gend George Telek.
Brady, through the organisers, had extended the invitation to PNG through Galut who had a difficult task in selecting a group to represent more than 800 different cultural groups.
“I sent the some sample videos of our traditional dancers and the organisers were impressed with the colourful Huli dancers,” Galut said.
The group’s return air tickets, accommodation and transport while in Australia will be met by the festival organisers.
Huli Duna Cultural Group chairman Simon Bole, who will be accompanying his dance troupe, said PNG had been talking about and promoting the LNG project.
Bole said the LNG project would only bring Western cultures and modernisation, “a threat to our culture”.
He said the LNG project would come and go but unique cultures and traditions must be preserved for long term sustainable tourism dollars.
“The LNG project will not promote our cultures. We have a rich culture that we must protect at all costs.
“We must preserve and teach our children to uphold our cultures which will become extinct if nothing is done,” Bole said.
He also appealed to Culture and Tourism Promotion Authority to support freelancers such as Galut, who had given their time and resource, to give the Huli an opportunity to become ambassadors re­presenting PNG’s different tribes at this year’s world music festival.

Bank South Pacific K283.15m net profit

BANK South Pacific posted an after tax profit of K283.15 million for the financial year 2010, The National reports.

The bank also announced that its assets as of December last year were worth K8.655 billion, up 6% from December 2009.

BSP chairman Kostas Constantinou made the disclosure in a financial result submitted to the Port Moresby Stock Exchange.

The bank’s pre-tax profit was K402.10 million, up 6% from K377.96 million posted at the end of 2009.

Constantinou said that emerging from period of some uncertainty into a year that held out some promise of a strengthening global recovery, and some positive expectations about the domestic economy, the BSP Group achieved sound result last year.

He said this was characterised by continued profitability and balance of sheet growth, showing operational and financial stability.

Constantinou said most of the growth was attributed to non-interest income streams following a fall in net interest margins occasioned by a prolonged decline in bank bill rates since late in the second quarter of the year.

The newly-appointed chairman stressed the re-branding of BSP continued to be successful last year with some emphasis given to the appropriate BSP branding of newly-acquired business in Fiji.

He said overall, the group posted well-rounded financial achievement for last year considering that the bank was progressing with major commitments to transform its programmes.

Constantinou said much work had been required on the integration of the newly acquired Fiji business.

“In 2010, there was evidence of a slow strengthening of global economic conditions with large traditional economic powers in North America and Europe showing more sustained recovery trends and the developing high-growth Asian and South American economies continuing to accelerate,” Constantinou said.

“PNG’s economy became increasingly exposed to those global trends as we move closer towards major steps change expected as the LNG project reaches production phase.

BSP was striving to get itself into a position where it would be able to achieve solid performances which would be competitive by global standards under these conditions.

“The 2010 results showed that we continue on track with this objective,” Constantinou added.

 

 

Departments summoned

PAC to haul up below par govt agencies

 

By DENNIS ORERE

 

Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inspected the Laloki Psychiatric Hospital and the Port Moresby General Hospital yesterday, The National reports.

The PAC is expected to hold inquiries into the Department of Health today and also open inquiries into several government entities.

Tomorrow, the PAC will haul up the worst performing government institutions identified through the inquiries, to explain to the committee why they are unable to improve their performance.

The inspection team yesterday was led by chairman Martin Aini and Bulolo MP Sam Basil.

Chief Secretary Margaret Elias and other senior go­vernment officials from the Prime Minister’s Department and the Department of Health accompanied the inspection team.

At the PMGH, the team visited various wards, asking questions and receiving answers from hospital management and staff members.

Patients with relatives and staff at the hospital reacted in various ways when they saw the team touring the hospital, with some being happy that such an inspection could result in changes to the hospital in the future.

Others just admired the presence of senior government officials at the hospital.

 

North Bougainville polls set for May 14

By STEPHANIE ELIZAH

 

PNG Electoral Commissioner Andrew Trawen has announ­ced March 21 as the date for the issue of writs for the North Bougainville open electorate by-election in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, The National reports.

It is to fill the vacant seat left by former North Bougainville member Michael Ogio, who is now the governor-general, and is expected to cost the state K2.6 million. 

Trawen, who was in Buka Island last Thursday to meet with the provincial election steering committee on preparations for the 2012 general election, said the by-election would take place as per the time sche­dule set by the commission.

“Following the issue of writs, close of nomination will be on March 28 with polling on May 14 and end on May 20.

“The return of writs will be on June 10,” Trawen said.

Bougainville electoral commissioner Reitama Taravaru said his office was prepared for the by-election.

“We aim to see a peaceful and democratic by-election. Despite the time constraints, I am confident it will progress at a comfortable pace,” Taravaru said.

Preparations by the Bougainville electoral team include training and awareness for groups who will be assisting in the by-election.

They include civil society groups, police, Leitana Wo­men’s Council and United church AIDS council.

“Due to the time constraints in preparing the roll before the issue of writs, we will be using the ABG electoral rolls used in the last election with village assembly clerks assisting to prepare the election roll be­cause of their local knowledge of the area and the people,” Ta­ravaru said.

Six assisting returning officers to be nominated by the PNG electoral commission will be assisting Taravaru, who will be the returning officer for the by-election.

 

 

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Fuel prices up again

By BOSORINA ROBBY

 

FUEL prices for this month will see a big increase led by diesel and kerosene, The National reports.

Consumers in Port Moresby will now have to pay K3.26 for a litre of diesel, a rise of 15t, while kerosene is up 17t to K3.19 per litre.

Petrol, meanwhile, rose by 7t to K3.69 per litre.

Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) Commissioner Dr Billy Manoka said given another increase in crude oil prices last month, demand for crude oil continued to reach high peaks in the Asia Pacific region.

However, the trend is heading for a repeat of high fuel prices last felt in July 2008.

Then, Port Moresby experienced the highest ever fuel charges with petrol selling at K4.20 per liter, diesel K4.19 and kerosene K4.

According the ICCC 2008 annual report, domestic prices decreased since August 2008 and this trend was maintained until December 2008.

This period of price reduction is the longest ever experienced in the country and the PNG consumers had benefited from these reductions.

This was due to the fall in crude and refined product prices as a result of a US-led recession which spread to Europe and parts of Asia.

From 2009 through to early this year, fuel and crude oil prices have continued to increase slowly but steadily.

Last month saw crude prices spiking due to political tensions in North Africa and several parts of Middle East.

This has caused crude oil prices to pass US$100 per barrel for the first time since 2008.

Changes in fuel prices are determined by global energy demand and supply and given that crude oil is a globally traded commodity, it is expected that demand and supply determinants in the major regions around the world, the value of the US dollar and other geo-political tensions in oil producing nations will continue to cause prices to change at any time in the future.

Manoka said should the crude oil continued to trade above the US$100 per barrel, then prices would have to be adjusted accordingly.

He said domestic prices would continue to fluctuate in the coming months should crude oil prices continue to trade below or above that mark.