OREANDA-NEWS. Mariana Resources Ltd, the AIM listed exploration and development company with projects in Turkey and South America, advises that following the expiry of 2,900,000 options earlier this year, the Board has approved the remuneration committee recommendations to issue 21,150,000 incentive and performance options to employees, directors and consultants. All options to employees and directors are issued under the conditions of the Employee Share Option Plan. The new options issued to directors are performance options specifically at an exercise price of 4.25p, 4.5p and 4.75p aiming at aligning the key objective of share price performance of the company and expire on 1 June 2019.

Currently the share options under the Employee Share Option Plan post this issue represent 4.33% of the company's total shares on issue (2015- 4.38% at time of last issue). As a result of the above option expiry and issue, the Company has the following options outstanding:

Employees 19,300,000
Directors 32,630,400
Other 6,798,100
Total outstanding 58,728,500

Directors Option Holdings for this year following this issue:

Director Opening Balance Expired Options Options issued Current Balance
John Horsburgh 5,900,000 600,000 1,750,000 7,050,000
Glen Parsons 8,200,000 600,000 5,000,000 12,600,000
Eric Roth 5,230,400 - 5,000,000 10,230,400
John Goodwin 1,000,000 - 1,750,000 2,750,000
Total 20,330,400 1,200,000 13,500,000 32,630,400

The issue of these incentive options will result in a non cash flow charge to the 2016 income statement of GBP 613,671.

Mariana Resources Ltd is an AIM quoted exploration and development company with an extensive portfolio of gold, silver and copper projects in South America and Turkey.

Mariana's most advanced asset is the Hot Maden gold-copper project in north east Turkey, which is a joint venture with its Turkish JV partner Lidya (30% Mariana and 70% Lidya). A maiden mineral resource estimate of 2.03 Moz gold Equivalent (Indicated Category) and 0.97 Moz gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) was reported for Hot Maden on August 18, 2015. Elsewhere in Turkey, Mariana holds a 100% interest in the Ergama gold-copper project.