Prime Minister (PM) James Marape has made it clear that the recently and hotly talked about topic of the proposed Gold Refinery Bill, is a work in process and is not in the process for being approved by the government anytime soon.
Marape, when responding to questions from the Member for Menyamya Mr. Solen Loifa on this particular bill in parliament today, said the government is re- looking at it wholistically and is not in the business of pushing through a proposed bill that would in the future not benefit the people and the major players in the country’s mining industry.
The proposed bill itself is not a new one as it has been in the government policy circle since 2012 and 2013 and the proposal came to the government desk sometime in 2019 and 2020.
“This proposal is a good one, but we will have to advance it to a stage where it will not affect our alluvial miners, not affecting individuals engaged in the buying and selling of gold and the big mining companies that have contracts,” said the PM.
“Those who have contracts, their contracts will be respected those already in the industry, whether in buying or producing.”
Marape said the government is focused on downstream processing of the country’s resources, including the downstream processing of gold where the country produces the finished gold products and sell overseas.
But this will be looked at closely before anything happens with the proposed bill to enable that.
“No final version of the refinery bill has been approved by cabinet as yet, it is still work in progress. We want to do something that is solid that is beneficial to our country and beneficial to all in the industry, whether at the large-scale level or at the small alluvial level.”
PM Marape said the end result is simple and that is for Papua New Guinea to have its own gold refinery or a gold mint sometime in the future, but to have that a lot more will be done before that goal is achieve.