** mining gold has started **

Here is the salient points from the first announcement for 2005. PNA has...

1. award Lotus Hall the Operating Contract for the Phu Bia Gold Mine. LH has considerable experience in the region - operating highly successful mining contracts at both Chatree in Thailand and Sepon Gold Mine in Laos.

2. Secured an experienced Operations Manager - Toren Olsen - who has 25 years experience including 10 years spent managing open pit heap leach operations in tropical environments.

3. Lotus Hall has alreadu assigned equipment to the project with pre-production mining of ore starting immediately.

4. Development is running to plan

5. Construction costs likely to be under the BFS capital cost estimate of $15.3 million

6. some of the most competitive unit mining costs in the industry - requiring only a modest mining fleet due to low waste to ore strip ratio (ore at or very near surface) PLUS minimal requirement for explosives due to softness of ore.

So we are mining at last!!!

Now there should still be a flood of announcements to follow on from this one covering drilling results and corporate developments.