Resource World Magazine

FIE LD R E PORT Angkor Gold has first-mover advantage in Cambodia by Leonard Melman Several nations around the world are working diligently to make their countries more attractive to resource development as a means of improving their economies. One such nation is Cambodia and Canadian junior miner, Angkor Gold Corp. [ANKTSXV; ANKOF-OTC], is working to take advantage of this current favourable environment. Several market analysts and I visited Angkor's Cambodian projects during late March in the company of Angkor's President and CEO, Mike Weeks. When asked about reasons for Angkor's becoming the first North American mining company working in Cambodia he replied, "…Angkor has a first-mover advantage. Cambodia is a country in which doing business is encouraged and supported by government. As it happens, I also love the people and the country." When it comes to mining, the Cambodian government has attempted to simplify and speed up the regulatory process by modeling their general minerals policy after mining-rich Australia. During a meeting with two lawyers, active in Cambodian corporate law, we learned that one important goal of Cambodian law-makers was consistency of law, particularly for the mining ministry, which has seen permit applications grow from about 15 about five years ago to over 70 today. Cambodia has been steadily improving their infrastructure, specifically including road improvement projects, which have reduced the driving time from the capital of Phnom Penh to the community of Ban Lung adjacent to Angkor's project areas from two days to only six or seven hours with more improvements scheduled. Given the country's high annual rainfall, adequate water supplies are readily available and electricity is imported from generation projects in nearby Vietnam. 40 www.resourceworld.com Angkor's project areas cover a total of five tenements (or concessions) named Banlung, Banlung North, Oyadao, Oyadao South and Andong Meas, plus three more tenement areas where exploration license applications have already been filed. The combined total of the company's areas of interest is about 1,800 km2. The company's focus is aimed in three specific directions. First, they plan to continue conducting sufficient exploration work to develop interest in some of their vast holdings in order to attract joint venture offers. Second, where feasible, construct such joint ventures to include net smelter returns on future productions with the goal of establishing future reliable cash flow. Third, the corporate plan is to use such revenues to further develop their own exploration projects. Clearly, in order to efficiently work toward the first goal, a cost-effective and time-saving method of establishing mineral potential would be invaluable and Angkor has turned toward a relatively new technique, that of analyzing samples from termite mounds which proliferate across many of their holding areas. During our travels in northern Cambodia, we literally saw hundreds of them. Termite mound analysis is actually a well-known method which has been documented with some degree of success in both Africa and Australia. In a paper published in National Geographic News, researchers in Australia reported that termite droppings recovered from these mounds could indeed be valid indicators of mineral values. Like all living creatures, termites require water to live and, during dry seasons, they burrow down through varying material in order to reach the water table, digesting whatever material they encounter along the way. The A typical termite mound on Angkor Gold property in Cambodia where termites do the soil sampling. Their droppings may contain gold values, indicating a potential gold deposit below. Photo by Leonard Melman. droppings from this material, which can be recovered from the surface of these mounds, can then be examined for meta values via spectrometer analysis. The great advantages for Angkor in using this process are speed and expense. Using normal investigative techniques, evaluation studies could take three months or longer before preliminary results might be obtained. By using spectroscopic analysis of termite mound material, the same progress can be accomplished in as little as three weeks. Other valuable indicators of potential economic mineralization include widespread evidence of substantial past artisanal mining activity by locals which dates back to Cambodia's colonial eras and evidence of alluvial gold throughout many areas of the company's holdings and data gained from Angkor's rock chip sampling and trenching activities. To date, Angkor has completed two working agreements. An Indian company, Mesco Gold Ltd., has signed an agreement calling for cash payment of $1.2 million and future production royalties of 10% in order to develop and mine Angkor`s Phum Syarong (PS) prospect located within the Oyadao South Concession. According to the most recent estimates, Mesco aims to be in production by late 2014. The other agreement is with a private Chinese company, All Solutions M AY 2 0 1 3

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