PNG Gold Corporation provides update: additional exploration and development at Imwauna contemplated and private placement financing announcement

The Imwauna gold property is located off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea on Normanby Island (Figure 1 – attached site map, showing Normanby Island relative to Papua New Guinea and Australia: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/p613a.JPG). The property contains numerous vein systems that outcrop at surface. The main vein system discovered to date – the Imwauna vein system – hosts high grade, low sulphidation, near-surface epithermal gold-silver mineralization. The Imwauna deposit has an excellent location as it is only 4 km from the coast at an elevation of approximately 400 m asl. (Figure 2 – See map attached: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/p613b.JPG). As well, the island is only 65 km northeast of the city of Alotau on the mainland of Papua New Guinea which provides excellent support infrastructure to the project.

With several drill hole intersections exceeding 10 g/t Au over 1.0 m (over 20% of the 178 drill holes have intersections over 10 g/t), management believes the Imwauna deposit has the potential to become a high grade gold mine – see Highlights in Table 1 below. For full drill results see Tables 1, 4, 5, 5A and 5B in the Technical Report filed on SEDAR on December 17, 2010 on behalf of International Silver Ridge Inc. (the “Technical Report”). The deposit has been delineated by surface trenching over more than 1,000 m of strike length and drilled to an average depth of 100 m vertically from surface. It is open at depth and on strike, particularly to the south where the limited previous drilling demonstrates the continuation of the vein system. The veins dip steeply west and range in width from less than 1 m up to 10 m. Gold occurs as free gold and in electrum. The property hosts numerous other mineralized veins that have been mapped in outcrops at surface but have received minimal previous exploration and little or no drilling.