THE Papua New Guinea Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) will now have access to real time data collected by operators in the mineral sector on the volume of resources they extract and export.
This follows the launch of the Osisoft pi system by MRA yesterday.
The system monitors how much of the resource is extracted by the respective companies in the country and exported.
“Under the Mining (Amendment) Act (2020), it requires mining companies to provide information and data to the state,” MRA managing director Jerry Garry said.
“We appreciate that Mining Act (1992) was done at a time when we were not so advanced.
“The 2020 amendment was designed to specifically address that by saying that we want digital information.
“This is to put to rest the perception that operators in the country are producing mineral resources and are taking them out of the country without us knowing what they are doing.
“So its in addressing that we embarked on tapping into the heart of the mineral processing system in every mine, so we can replicate this information in MRA.”
Garry said that meant a close monitoring of whatever was produced in a processing plant and this information would be stored in MRA for reconciliation purposes.
We would like to be able to reconcile figures given by the company so we can all agree that you have produced this much mineral and revenue for the country.”
Garry said the authority had spoken to tenement holders in the country and they had all allowed MRA’s engineers onto their sites and they had successfully completed feasibility studies.
“Next year we will launch the actual work,” he said.
“We will collect all live data from all mines particularly from the mineral processing plants for monitoring purposes.”
“This is a breakthrough.”
The National/Pacific Mining Watch