Brisbane, July 1, 2008 (ABN Newswire) - The Board of Republic Gold (ASX:RAU) announces that it has planned a 1,500 metre diamond drilling programme at the Amayapampa Gold Project in Bolivia. The aim of the programme is to check a number of high grade channel samples in the orebody and to extend the mineralisation to depth where a small number of drillholes and one channel sample indicate that the mineralisation has good potential for extensions at depth.

This drilling programme has been planned following a recent visit to the site by the Company's Managing Director, Mr John Kelly, and its Technical Director, Mr Neb Zurkic.

Ten drillholes are planned, with the longest hole being 220 metres.

Mr Zurkic commented that "the grades of some of the channel sampling are very high, with 5 metres at 127.1 g/t Au and 20 metres at 40.6 g/t Au being the best. These are part of a suite of better than 10 g/t Au, mostly 5 metre intervals which are spatially well represented over a 400 metre strike length and 150 metre depth. From the channel sampling that can be viewed in the old workings and from discussions with the supervising senior geologist at the time, it seems that the sampling was done correctly, but this needs to be confirmed. We have also run some optimised pits as part of the planning process and the one channel sample beneath these optimisations runs 10 metres at 5.6 g/t Au. If the zone represented by this sample can be extended significantly then there is excellent potential to enlarge the size of the open pit considerably and extend the life of the Project."

The orogenic, sediment-hosted style of the Amayapampa mineralisation lends itself to the high grades already encountered and also to significant depth and strike potential. The geological corridor that hosts Amayapampa has a strike length of 15 kilometres and is mineralised with a number of base and precious metals at a series of current and historic mines. The Company's Bolivian subsidiary holds mining concessions that cover approximately 5.5 kilometres of this mineralised corridor.

A local drilling contractor, Leduc Drilling, has a rig available and will visit the site this week to review logistical issues with the programme prior to contracting to do the work.