May 18 – Mongolia’s Cabinet identified a list of several “urgent” roads and bridges that need to be built. It also announced that 5,572 kilometers of roads and 900 kilometers of highways connecting Ulaanbaatar with aimags (provinces) would be restored under the umbrella of the country’s US$3.75 billion “New Up Building” program.

While US$3.5 billion will be drawn from the mining sector for the program, US$17.5 million of the funding is expected to come from foreign and domestic investment, according to officials. Continue Reading

May 17 – Starting from July, Turkish Airlines will offer direct flights from Ulaanbaatar to Istanbul three times a week.

A cooperation memorandum on the direct flight was signed on by S. Batmonkh, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Mongolia and by Bahri Kesici, a deputy director-general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation at Turkey’s Ministry of Transport and Communication. Continue Reading

Apr. 18 – Mongolia’s trade turnover reached US$2.34 billion in the first quarter of the year, according to the Mongolia national statistics office that released its social and economic review for the first three months of 2012.

In the first quarter of the year, Mongolia traded with a total of 113 countries. Exports have made up US$883.8 million while imports stood at US$1.46 billion.

By March 2012, total external trade turnover increased by US$511.7 million (or 28 percent), of which imports increased by US$370.1 million (or 34 percent), and exports by US$141.7 million (or 19.1 percent) against the previous year. Continue Reading

Apr. 11 – New amendments to the country’s social insurance law may interest entities who employ middle aged individuals, as a draft law suggests releasing them from paying such employees’ social insurance payments.

According to the law, all entities are currently paying the following rates for each employee:

• 7 percent for pension insurance
• 0.5 percent for benefit insurance
• 2 percent for health insurance
• 1-3 percent for industrial accident and occupational disease insurance
• 0.5 percent for unemployment insurance Continue Reading

Apr. 10 – The Ulaanbaatar Railway Mongolia-Russia joint venture (UBTZ) transported a record 18.4 million tons of cargo and gained net profits amounting to more than 4.4 billion tugrik last year, according to the company statement which was announced during a regular meeting of the board of directors.

Freight traffic has grown by 10 percent, while the volume of passengers has grown by 9 percent to 3,829,000 in 2011, compared with 2010. The majority of passengers (3,662,600) were carried domestically, and 166,400 passengers internationally.

Freight turnover for the Ulaanbaatar Railway, or the Trans-Mongolian Railway, stood at 11,382,000 tons in 2011. Continue Reading

Apr. 9 – Since the fall of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago, Mongolia has emerged as one of the most democratic nations out of the former communist states across Central Asia. And while improvement can still be made, the country has become one of Asia’s most open and pro-business economies.

Mongolia is middle-ranking both in the world and the East Asia and Pacific region in terms of its investment climate, according to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2012 report. The country ranks 86th in the world for 2012, which is exactly average for the counties within its region and above neighboring China (91st) and Russia (120th), but below Kazakhstan (47th). Continue Reading

Apr. 3 – Ivanhoe Mines has reported that construction of the Oyu Tolgoi (OT) copper-gold mining complex is advancing toward its planned start-up in 2012 with commercial production scheduled for the first half of 2013. The project is currently 72.7 percent complete, according to the company.

Ivanhoe, which began investing in the project in April 2011, has spent US$4 billion on the Oyu Tolgoi complex. In total, including drilling exploration and preparation work on the mine, the company has currently spent US$10 billion on the project.

OT – located 550 kilometers south of Ulaanbaatar and 95 kilometers from the China-Mongolia border – has large copper, gold, silver and molybdenum reserves. The mine is subdivided into three sections:

• Hugo Dummett
• Herugo
• Southern Oyu Continue Reading

Mar. 21 – Mongolia’s internet sector is considered to be one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in the country, according to market research conducted by local Frontier Securities.

The number of internet subscribers in the country increased 10-fold from 2006 to 2009 – from around 10,000 to over 100,000. Estimates grew to 199,000 subscribers by the end of 2010 due in part to falling costs as the market expands.

According to Frontier Securities data, the wholesale price connection has dropped from US$3,250 per 1 Mbps in 2004 to US$80 in 2011. Continue Reading