Ukhnaa Khurelsukh arrived here earlier in the day on a three-day visit. He is set to attend a joint business forum and meet other Korean leaders before heading home Wednesday.

Moon's meeting with Khurelsukh will be held later in the day at Cheong Wa Dae, and Mongolian Foreign Minister Tsend Munkh-Org and other visiting officials, including lawmakers, will also participate, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

Monday's meeting comes about four months after Moon and his Mongolian counterpart Khaltmaagiin Battulga agreed to increase exchange and cooperation between their countries in a bilateral summit held on the sidelines of a regional economic forum in Vladivostok, Russia, in September.

South Korea and Mongolia established diplomatic ties in 1990.

In his letter sent on January 12, the Speaker requested President Kh.Battulga to call for regular consumption of traditional Mongolian dairy products by enterprises and households by issuing a decree, while informing the President of his initiative to promote production and consumption of traditional Mongolian dairy products so as to ensure food safety.

Moreover, the Speaker forwarded a proposal to Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh regarding measures such as ensuring production quality and standards for traditional Mongolian dairy products, improving the database, human resource and transport and logistics infrastructure, and promoting innovation technology and investment in the production of dairy products.
Kh.Aminaa

Bitmain Technologies, the operator of some of the largest mining farms in China, is among several companies looking to expand overseas. The company’s spokesman, Nishant Sharma, told Reuters that it is eyeing bitcoin mining sites in Canada’s Québec province, which currently enjoys an energy surplus. He added that the company is in talks with regional power authorities in the province, and that it is also planning to expand in Switzerland.

Two Chinese miners said local authorities in China are increasingly unwilling to allow expansion and had started to shut down some mines in late 2017, as China clamped down on cryptocurrencies.

“We, and from what I understand many of our peers, are already making plans to go overseas,” said Li Wei, chief executive of ZQMiner, a Wuhan-based company which sells bitcoin mining equipment and has mines in three Chinese provinces.

According to public utility Hydro Québec, the energy surplus of the province is equivalent to up to 100 Terawatt hours over the course of ten years. One Terawatt hour powers about 60,000 homes in Québec during one year.

David Vincent, the director of business development at Hydro Québec distribution, said that “mining companies are eyeing operations from about 20 megawatts, the size of a data centre, to sites as large as 300 megawatts, about the size of a small aluminum smelter.”

Once a driving force behind cryptocurrency mining, China accounted for more than two-thirds of the world’s bitcoin-mining operations. However, recently, Chinese regulators started cracking down on virtual currencies, explaining it as a fight with capital outflow. They claimed the trade in cryptocurrencies was being used by Chinese citizens to move cash abroad.

Last year, the regulators banned bitcoin trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs,) which forced all bitcoin exchanges and cryptocurrency trading platforms to immediately stop registering new users, and announce plans to stop virtual currency transaction services.

The parent will sell some 30 percent of SoftBank Corp. It plans to apply to the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the IPO as early as spring, which falls between March and May, and aims to debut the shares in Tokyo and elsewhere, possibly London, around autumn, the newspaper said, without citing any sources for the information.

The 2 trillion yen ($18 billion) IPO would rival the 2.2 trillion yen 1987 listing of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (9432.T) in size, the Nikkei said, making it one of Japan’s biggest initial public offerings.

SoftBank Group said in a statement on Monday that a listing of the business was one option for its capital strategy but that no such decision had been made.

The listing would aim to give the mobile-phone unit more autonomy in a group that has become more of an international investment company in recent years, the newspaper said. SoftBank would use the proceeds to invest in growth, such as buying into foreign information-technology companies, the Nikkei said.

SoftBank has been aggressively investing in tech companies worldwide, notably through its $98 billion London-based Vision Fund, saying last month that a group it leads will buy a large number of shares of Uber Technologies Inc in a deal that values the ride-services firm at $48 billion.

“SoftBank’s future will focus less on the mobile-phone business and more on allocating cash to build the world’s largest portfolio of investments in future technologies and business models,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

“It makes sense to spin off the mobile-phone business using a public offering that would leave SoftBank in control and provide SoftBank with more cash to pursue its strategy of investing in companies with potentially high growth prospects,” Gordon said by email. “It is a way of obtaining capital without adding debt or diluting SoftBank’s equity interests in the growth companies.”

A parent company normally must limit its stake in a subsidiary listed on the TSE First Section to less than 65 percent, but the requirement can be eased if the unit also lists overseas, the Nikkei said.

“In general, of course, in the future there will certainly need to be legislative regulation. The Central Bank has already repeatedly formulated its attitude to this case, just as the government has.

"The CBR behaves conservatively, but, in my opinion, there are grounds for this conservatism, because it is known that there is nothing behind cryptocurrency, it cannot be a means of accumulation, it has no material value behind it and it is in no way secured,” he said.

“In certain situations it can be a way of paying that can be done quickly and efficiently. You can pay, but there are no savings and no guarantee, so the Central Bank approaches this very carefully. The fluctuations are colossal: today you invested everything, and tomorrow everything is lost.

“If we regulate, but not efficiently enough, then the government will be responsible for the difficult situations that people can get into. Right now it is the responsibility of the person himself and the government can only say ‘you can do this but you can’t do that,’ and if it’s still not clear then there will be some problems that need to be solved.”

Opinion on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remains divided, with some financial experts believing it is a worthy investment, as the price fluctuations and its meteoric rise in value will eventually even out, while others consider it a bubble that will burst sooner or later.

The Russian government is currently mulling over how to best regulate cryptocurrencies, with Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev suggesting in December that mining bitcoin and other forms of online money would be illegal, but buying them or trading them would remain within the law.

The WB says that Mongolia's GDP will increase by 7.3 percent in 2019 and 5.5 percent in 2020. Asian Development Bank expects three percent growth for Mongolia in 2018, but the International Monetary Fund predicts that the economy will expand by 4.2 percent.

The Government of Mongolia says that investors’ trust in Mongolia was regained in 2017, and notes that GDP growth reached 3.8 percent in 2017, as predicted. The WB stated in its flagship report, Global Economic Prospects, that the economies of developing countries will grow by 4.5 percent as the supply of commodities continues to increase in 2018.

Credit ratings agency Moody’s also released its 2018 outlook, and predicts that the economies of developing countries will grow by 5.9 percent this year. Moody's noted that the economies of the Asia-Pacific region's developing nations will reach 6.5 percent.

At the beginning of the meeting, the parties appreciated intensive activity of a project team, established on November, 2017 responsible for formulating technical documentation of the project on extension of Biocombinat state owned enterprise. Extension work of Biocombinat will be implemented with interest free soft loan of USD 25 million from the Hungarian Government.

They talked over toconclude negotiaton on documentation of the project and technical design in February, to launch bid process in Hungary and to commence the extension work by June, establishing the loan agreement.

Biocombinat state owned enterprise was constructed and put into operation with non-refundable aid from Government of Hungary in 1973. The renovation will allow Mongolia to produce most of animal vaccines at home.

At the end of the meeting, Minister B.Batzorig asked the sides to closely and actively collaborate in commencing the work and expressed his confidence that the work would be implemented successfully.

B.Batchimeg

The planned 3D survey, which focused on defining and de-risking near term drilling targets within the Tugrug basin has been completed. All the Company’s technical objectives were met during the 3D acquisition and preliminary processing (in field) has confirmed excellent data quality. The full 3D dataset has now been transmitted to the processing contractor, Western Geco and full Pre-Stack Time Migration (PSTM) and Pre-Stack Depth Migration (PSDM) processing is underway. Expected turnaround time will be mid first-quarter 2018 for final PSTM data and end first-quarter 2018 for full PSDM data.

The Tugrug basin has a proven working petroleum system which was confirmed with a stratigraphic core hole drilled by the Company in 2011 near the basin margin. The core hole contained live, un-biodegraded oil in good quality sandstone reservoir. The newly acquired 3D data will enable the Company to optimize the drilling location in the Falcon prospect, a target for the 2018 drilling program.

The Company had initially planned to proceed with a small 2D seismic acquisition program in the Tugrug basin following the completion of the 3D survey. However, as this 2D program was designed to identify additional prospects and leads for potential drilling beyond 2018, and therefore does not impact the choice of locations for the 2018 drilling program, the Company has decided to not acquire the Tugrug basin 2D seismic at this time. A factor in this decision is that the Mongolian winter has been harsh and there are only a few grazing lands still accessible to livestock, one of which is in the area where the Tugrug basin 2D survey was planned. Herders and their livestock have therefore entered the area in large numbers. The Company therefore felt it prudent to postpone the 2017/18 Block V 2D seismic program.

The seismic crew has mobilized to Block IV and has commenced the planned 204-km 2D seismic acquisition program over the Khangai basin in the northern part of Block IV, which is anticipated to complete by early February 2018. This survey aims to better define, for potential drilling in future, certain attractive leads identified on regional 2D seismic, gravity and magnetic surveys acquired in 2015.

Further details on the Company's work programme plans in 2018 and 2019 will be announced in due course.