Altai acquires Mabulao One copper-gold deposit in the Philippines.

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 1996--Altai Resources Inc. ("Altai") announces that its operating arm, Altai Philippines Mining Corporation ("Altai Philippines") has acquired the Mabulao One copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry deposit located in the Camarines Norte Province, the Philippines.

The 8,100 acre property is located within 8 kilometres from a deep sea port and is adjacent to the Pan Philippines Maharlika (Royal) highway. The infrastructure is therefore excellent.

The property was explored prior to 1975 by the Philippines Iron Mines for iron and copper and in the 1980's by the Benguet Corporation - Getty Minerals partnership for uranium. Virtually all the exploration work on the property was supervised by engineer H. Uriate who worked over 25 years in the area and has an intimate knowledge of it.

The following information is based primarily on his reports. The property was also visited by A. Po, consulting geologist of Altai. Altai Philippines is still in the process of compiling the data it could obtain from all earlier work on the project and the information below is preliminary in nature. Altai will audit the resource inventory when the data compilation is complete.

A major hydrothermal alteration zone 15 kilometres in length around a diorite intrusion hosts copper gold-molybdenum deposits. Four mineralized zones are exposed at surface. The mineralized zones consist of primary sulphide deposits of unknown thickness overlain by supergene enriched oxidized copper-gold deposits usually 15 metres in thickness.

Two of these copper-gold zones received some exploration attention by previous workers. The mineralized zone at the Northwest end of the hydrothermal alteration zone was probed by 20 short diamond drill holes and the oxidized portion of the deposit was also trenched and test pitted.

The copper-gold zone at the Eastern end of the alteration zone, 15 kilometres away from the zone mentioned above, was trenched, test pitted and investigated by seven diamond drill holes.

Two intervening copper-gold zones were not fully explored except for mapping and surface sampling.

Notes and reports by engineer Uriarte state that the oxidized, surface gold-copper inventory on these four zones has the potential to exceed 25 million tonnes. Such deposits are almost always higher grade than underlying sulphide deposits, inexpensive to mine and lend themselves to leaching which is lower cost than conventional milling to recover the contained metals.

According to engineer Po, between these four zones that are spread over 15 kilometres along the borders of a diorite intrusion, the hydrothermal alteration related to mineralization is almost continuous. He believes that further exploration may join the mine bodies thus making it a continuous ore zone. He states "The Mabulao copper-gold project has the making of hosting a world class copper porphyry deposit.

It is not difficult to envisage a potential reserve of more than half a billion metric tonnes of porphyry type deposit averaging approximately 0.37% Cu and 0.5 g/t Au with some molybdenum". If this potential is eventually proven Mabulao One property will host about 10 million ounces of gold and 5 billion pounds of copper equivalent (copper + molybdenum with some silver credits).

Six kilometres to the east of the above mentioned intrusion there is a similar but smaller intrusion within Altai's property. One copper-gold zone was discovered around it and was investigated by forty five (45) short diamond drill holes by earlier workers. Engineer Uriarte reports that the oxidized gold-copper cap was explored by drilling, 12 test pits and 18 trenches. He estimates probable and potential inventory of oxidized material at 5.9 million tonnes averaging 4.6 g/t gold and 1.5 % copper.

Upon the compilation of the available data Altai Philippines will start an exploration program on this property. Altai's primary objective is to prove up and develop first the oxidized gold-copper rich supergene deposits. -0-

For further information, please contact

ALTAI RESOURCES INC. Niyazi Kacira President Tel: [phone]

CONTACT: Altai Resources Inc.

Niyazi Kacira, 416/869-1338