This visit was organized in frames of 45th anniversary of the Mongolia-Japan diplomatic relations after another visit of the Japanese side--Tadamori Oshima, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Japan paid earlier this year. Motoo Hayashi’s visiting group consisted of 58 people including parliamentarians and delegates of the private sector.

Within the visit, the Japanese delegation had a courtesy call on the President of Mongolia. Furthermore, the delegation held meetings with M.Enkhbold, Parliament Speaker, S.Batbold, Mayor of Ulaanbaatar, Ts.Elbegdorj, a former President of Mongolia, D.Sumiyabazar, Chairman of Mongolia-Japan Parliamentary Friendship Group, and other parliamentarians on September 7.

In addition, a displaying show of Japanese foods and products was organized. It was followed by a meeting held between the Mongolian and Japanese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

The Japanese delegation hopes that the visit would contribute to boosting the bilateral relations through active cooperation, and expressed its aspiration to strengthen the collaboration between the friendship groups in making this visit more fruitful and forwarding the ties in other fields.

Today, 99 per cent of Mongolian coal is being exported to China. In 2016, the coal import of China went up by 23 per cent as the annual working days of local mines have been lowered from 365 to 276.

A MONTSAME news agency's correspondent interviewed Sun Shouren, General Secretary of the National Coal Association of China, during the Coal Mongolia-2017 Conference held last week in Ulaanbaatar. Sun Shouren said “Mongolia is the third biggest country to supply coal to China, and the coal import from Mongolia began to revive this year. Last year we imported a total of 24 million tons of coal from Mongolia. In the first six months of this year, the China's coal import from Mongolia reached 15 tons. We expect that the import from Mongolia will be higher than the sizes of last year”

He also noted that Mongolia’s coal quality is high and easy to process as it is semi-soft and its ash content is low.

Demand has improved as most of the world's major economies started to recover this year, and the growth among BRICS countries continued to outpace the global average, said Mike Fang, managing director for Maersk Line's Greater China Cluster.

"There is much potential to enable trade among BRICS nations and we will definitely look into it," he said in a statement.

Maersk's exports from China to India increased 26.2 percent year-on-year in the first half, those to Brazil and South Africa both rose 8.7 percent, while Maersk's imports from South Africa to China surged 43.9 percent, according to Fang.

The company's statistics showed customers in other BRICS countries were most attracted to Chinese textiles and clothing, consumer electronics and furniture.

While China's imports still focused on raw materials and resources, Maersk saw increases in the imports of meat from Brazil as well as fruit and nuts from South Africa.

E-commerce developed very fast with other BRICS countries' products gaining traction on the Chinese market, Fang said.

Customs data showed a 37.7-percent year-on-year growth in China's imports from other BRICS countries in the first seven months of this year, faster than the 28.7-percent increase in exports to those countries.

Grouping Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, BRICS accounted for 23 percent of the 2016 global economy, almost double their share in 2006, and contributed to more than half of global growth.

Four thousand tons of spring wheat will be delivered to China from Russia’s Novosibirsk region by October 10. It’s the first batch of wheat purchased by China's largest food processor COFCO.

"Together with our suppliers, we plan to discuss how to better meet the demand of Chinese mills. We want to know more about the production and the quality of Russian wheat in order to prepare for the expansion of imports,” said COFCO’s general manager for wheat Ma Lijun.

COFCO is among the 500 largest global companies and is ready to import up to two million tons of Russian grain, gradually increasing to five million tons.

Venezuela is also expecting to increase Russian wheat imports. President Nicolas Maduro says he plans to discuss it with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

"I will talk to President Putin - very soon I'm going to Moscow – about increasing [deliveries of wheat – Ed.] to 100,000 tons," said Maduro at a meeting of the country’s Constitutional Assembly. The current agreements is for Venezuela to import 60,000 tons per month.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt have also expressed an interest in buying more grain from Russia, including wheat.

Last year, Russia managed became the world’s leading exporter of grain, after shipping 34 million tons out of its 119 million ton harvest.

According to the Moscow-based grain consultant ProZerno, the country is expected to harvest 130.7 million metric tons this year. It is 2.6 percent more than the previous record set in 1978 before the Soviet-Afghan War.

Agriculture has become Russia’s second biggest export after oil and gas.

The head of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Jose Graziano da Silva said Russia has made considerable progress in developing its agricultural sector and is now a major player in the world agricultural market.

'A working group on the Selenga project has been formed, and it will convene in early October in Ulaanbaatar, prior to the intergovernmental committee’s meeting due in late October,' the minister added.

According to Minister Donskoi, the initiatives include the modernisation of the existing and the construction of new power transmission lines to supply electricity to Mongolia and its transit to China. In this case, the minister said, it will supply Mongolia with power that would be even cheaper than the electricity generated by the HPP.

Among other alternatives, suggested by Donskoi, is the construction of advanced coal-powered thermal power stations and the use of other renewable energy sources.

The construction of hydroelectric power chain on the Selenga River, the main tributary of Lake Baikal, and the rivers flowing into Selenga is aimed to help Mongolia solve the problem of energy deficit. But scientists fear that the project may negatively affect the ecosystem of Baikal and Selenga. They also drew attention to seismic danger of the territory where the power stations may be built.

Earlier, First Deputy Minister of Energy Aleksei Teksler told reporters that his ministry considers it reasonable to build electric transmission lines to Mongolia instead of hydroelectric power stations. He noted that the construction of the power transmission line will cost 3.5 times cheaper per MW/h, in comparison with the cost of construction of a new power generation facility.

Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales. The move will have a profound impact on the environment and growth of China’s auto industry, Xin said at an auto forum in Tianjin on Saturday.

A ban on combustion-engine vehicles will help push both local and global automakers to shift toward electric vehicles, a carrot-and-stick approach that could boost sales of energy-efficient cars and trucks and reduce air pollution while serving the strategic goal of cutting oil imports. The government offers generous subsidies to makers of new-energy vehicles. It also plans to require automakers to earn enough credits or buy them from competitors with a surplus under a new cap-and-trade program for fuel economy and emissions.

Honda Motor Co. will launch an electric car for the China market in 2018, China Chief Operating Officer Yasuhide Mizuno said at the same forum. The Japanese carmaker is developing the vehicle with Chinese joint ventures of Guangqi Honda Automobile Co. and Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co. and will create a new brand with them, he said.

Internet entrepreneur William Li’s Nio will start selling ES8, a sport-utility vehicle powered only with batteries, in mid-December. The startup is working with state-owned Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group, which also is in a venture with Volkswagen AG to introduce an electric SUV next year.

China, seeking to meet its promise to cap its carbon emissions by 2030, is the latest country to unveil plans to phase out vehicles running on fossil fuels. The U.K. said in July it will ban sales of diesel- and gasoline-fueled cars by 2040, two weeks after France announced a similar plan to reduce air pollution and meet targets to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

France is leading a push to clamp down on the taxation of such companies, but has found support from other countries also frustrated at the low tax they receive under current international rules.

Currently such companies are often taxed on profits booked by subsidiaries in low-tax countries like Ireland even though the revenue originated from other EU countries.

“We should no longer accept that these companies do business in Europe while paying minimal amounts of tax to our treasuries,” the four ministers wrote in a letter seen by Reuters.

The letter, signed by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, Wolfgang Schaeuble of Germany, Pier-Carlo Padoan of Italy and Luis de Guindos, was addressed to the EU’s Estonian presidency with the bloc’s executive Commission in copy.

They urged the Commission to come up with a solution creating an “equalization tax” on turnover that would bring taxation to the level of corporate tax in the country where the revenue was earned.

“The amounts raised would aim to reflect some of what these companies should be paying in terms of corporate tax,” the ministers said in the letter, first reported on by the Financial Times.

Le Maire, Schaeuble, Padoan and de Guindos of Spain said they wanted to present the issue to other EU counterparts at a Sept. 15-16 meeting in Tallinn.

The EU’s current Estonian presidency has scheduled a discussion at the meeting about the concept of “permanent establishment”, with the aim of making it possible to tax firms where they create value, not only where they have their tax residence.

France has stepped up pressure for EU tax rules after facing legal setbacks trying to obtain payments for taxes on activities in the country.

A French court ruled in July French court ruled that Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, was not liable to pay 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in back taxes because it had no “permanent establishment” in France and ran its operations there from Ireland.

The news of the talks on Sunday helped offset the downward pressure on oil prices amid worries that energy demand would be hit hard by Hurricane Irma.

Hurricane Irma knocked out power to more than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida on Sunday, but it has weakened to a Category 2 with maximum sustained winds of 110 miles per hour (177 kph).

U.S. crude for October delivery CLc1 was up 29 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $47.77, having tumbled 3.3 percent on Friday.

London Brent crude for November delivery LCOc1 was up 23 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $54.01 a barrel by 0023 GMT, having settled down 1.3 percent.

OPEC and other producers, including Russia, have agreed to reduce crude output by about 1.8 million barrels per day until next March in a bid to reduce global oil inventories and support oil prices.

The Saudi energy ministry said Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih agreed with his Kazakh counterpart that the option to extend the rebalancing effort would be considered in due course.

Elsewhere, Iran will reach an oil production rate of 4.5 million barrels per day (bpd) within five years, Ali Kardor, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said Sunday according to the oil ministry news site SHANA.

Iran has been producing around 3.8 million bpd in recent months.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday also suspended any dialogue with Qatar, accusing it of “distorting facts”, just after a report of a phone call between the leaders of both countries suggested a breakthrough in the Gulf dispute.