The Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) now has access to mineral data from mining operations in the country in real time to ensure transparency and accuracy in mining operations following the launching of its new Mineral Production Data Repository Hub on Friday 14th April.
MRA Acting Managing Director, Mr. Jerry Gerry, said the new system should enable full access to what goes on in the mining sites from the crusher to the plant and the exporting of mineral ores.
“This will give us additional capability to monitor what leaves the country, we can ascertain what profits paid for, proper taxes, royalty passed to the nation,” said the acting managing director.
The new system sees the MRA have its officers sit in the hub at the Mining Haus in Port Moresby, where they have access to the same data in real time, which their counter-parts at mine sites will have access to.
The new system not only allow the MRA and the government to independently monitor the minerals mined and exported. It will also give mining companies greater leverage on their transparency scale in the international stage.
It will ensure there is transparency and all minerals leaving the country are accounted for. However, currently the live feed is only implemented in three mining sites in the country, which are Ok Tedi, Lihir and Simberi mines.
“The next two mines that we want to tap into are Ramu (Ramu Nickel) and Kainantu (K- 92), they’ve given us the green light to go ahead,” he said.
However, Mr. Gerry revealed that the systems of these two mines are little bit complicated then Ok Tedi, Lihir and Simberi, but he has confidence that the MRA engineers will have the live feed installed eventually.
“I’m very confident that after Simberi, they will upload Ramu and Kainantu onto our system.”
“By the end of this year, we should have all of them locked up in our system,” he said.
Meanwhile, the new hub system is transforming the way the MRA monitors what goes out of the country and what is being received.
This is because in the last 40 years, mining companies have been submitting a form to MRA stating the amount of mineral they have been exporting. However, the MRA as the regulator has had no way of verifying the data given in the forms, but this has changed as of Friday.