Singapore company aims to recapitalise and restart Tolukuma gold mine, NPCP to contribute K450 million to Supplementary Budget, and PNG Defence Force ventures into business. Your weekly digest of the latest business news.

Newly-formed, Singapore-based Asidokona Mining Resources, a private company, has bought the Tolukuma gold mine in Central Province for K81.35 million to recapitalise and eventually restart the mine. Executive Chairman Philip Soh said the company would be run by Papua New Guineans. The Central provincial government and landowners will take a 10% shareholding in the company.

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The National Petroleum Company of PNG says the K450 million it will contribute to the Supplementary Budget is from its share of the LNG revenue collected this year.
 NPCP Managing Director Wapu Sonk says the payment ‘is not a dividend payment and must be recouped’.
 The Supplementary Budget will be handed down latter this month.

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The National Government will provide seed capital of K18 million to support the commercial arm of the PNG Defence Force. Defence Commercial Incorporated Ltd will venture into four business areas of travel services, car hire, real estate and fuel distribution services.

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Energy giant ExxonMobil PNG has voiced ‘concern’ that landowners are failing to receive their due benefits from the PNG LNG project and has vowed to do all it can ‘to encourage a speedy resolution’ of the problem, which risks disrupting production.

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Lihir contract signed. Credit: Post Courier.

Two landowner companies have won commercial contracts to service Lihir Gold Ltd. Anitua Drilling Services will provide mine drilling, and Noram will deliver stevedoring services for the Lihir operation.

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Only 30% of the public funds spent in the country are accounted for, according to Auditor General Philip Nauga.

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Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, plans to sign the final documents of the Port Moresby sewerage system during his visit to Japan this week. The K206 million project was initially signed 18 years ago with the Japanese government.

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The K68 million Hoskins Airport upgrading project in West New Britain is due to be completed at the end of this month. The project, 82 per cent funded by the Asian Development Bank and 18 per cent by the Government, included the aircraft pavement upgrading and a new terminal building. Work was carried out by China Overseas Engineering Co.

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Businessman Yoka Ekip. Credit: PNG Attitude.

Western Highlands businessman Yoka Ekip has paid K1.4 million of his own money to build a new road in Mt Hagen district, after becoming frustrated at the lack of services in his area. He has now opened the 3.5km road from Kagamuga airport to Ruki.

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A UK business delegation involved in agriculture, shipping, capital markets, energy, gas and mining sectors has been in PNG for the last few days. Next month, a French business delegation arrives for three days, from 2–5 November.

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Fiji has refinanced its U.S. dollar-denominated sovereign debt at an interest rate about a quarter lower than it was previously paying. Fiji’s US$200 million global bond offering carried a coupon of 6.625%, down from a 9% rate on a US$250 million bond sold in 2011, a reduction that suggests improving international confidence in the country’s economy and its political situation.

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And finally, marine scientists are dumbfounded by the discovery of sharks swimming inside an active underwater volcano in Solomon Islands. Dozens of hammerhead  and silky sharks have been filmed swimming around in extremely hot and acidic water inside the caldera of the Kavachi volcano in a lagoon in the country’s west.