paykel,Well, you are entitled to your opinion like anyone else...

paykel,

Well, you are entitled to your opinion like anyone else but I have to argue a couple of your points.

The Co-O system is multi-veined so getting an overall mine-able reserve figure is never going to be as straight-forward as drilling out a porphyry at 25m centres - it just does not work that way for narrow-vein miners as they just have to keep drilling ahead to cover their depletions. MML are currently deploying more drills for that purpose.

The current 1.2m oz resource has barely tickled the newly discovered GH vein as they have only put 12 holes into so far and only 1 of those was down below level 8. Even so, the average of those intercepts was 2.23m @ 61.84g/t - so it appears to offer exciting potential.

Current developments are up at level 2 (33-39g/t) and level 3 (70-92g/t) on the GHV so blended head-grade looks likely to increase above the Dec08 quarter figure of 15.84g/t with corresponding reductions in cost/oz.

But it's not all about the GHV: New Cato 1 has 92koz @ 54.8g/t (so far) and New Cato 3 has 149koz @ 41g/t (so far), with all veins open at depth.

Hence I would contradict your comment that Co-O is not at open-ended system - in fact the opposite would appear to be the case.

As for the Philippines: well we all have to decide on the political/country risk of our investments but I have been involved in far worse prospects and I actually consider it relatively benign compared to many. They are certainly trying their best to encourage inward investment - note the current 'tax-free holiday' being negotiated for MML.
CPDLC