GEC presents final results, Kh.Battulga elected as President of Mongolia www.montsame.mn

General Election Commission presented the results of Presidential election’s second round at 9.40AM. The Head of General Election Commission Ch.Sodnomtseren informed that the GEC discussed the second polling of Presidential election and prepared two resolutions. The first resolution states MPP’s candidate M.Enkhbold received 497,067 votes, which is 41.16 percent of the total votes, while DP’s candidate Kh.Battulga received 50.61 percent with 611,226 votes in the second polling of 2017 Presidential election of Mongolia.
Also, a Resolution on Approving the Authorities of the President of Mongolia was prepared to present to the Parliament for approval. A total of 1,990,797 people registered for the second polling of Presidential election and the voter turnout reached 60.67 percent with some 1,207,787 voters participating in the polling.

China, Mongolia extend 15 bln yuan currency swaps for another 3 years www.dailymail.co.uk

BEIJING, July 6 (Reuters) - The People's Bank of China (PBOC) and the Bank of Mongolia have extended their currency swap arrangement for another three years, China's central bank said on Thursday.
The deal aims to facilitate bilateral trade and investment and promote the economic development of both countries, according to the statement on the website of PBOC.
The swap arrangement will continue to have a size of 15 billion yuan ($2.20 billion) and 5.4 trillion Mongolian tugrik. ($1 = 6.8037 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Sam Holmes)

EU and Japan reach free trade deal www.bbc.com

The European Union and Japan have formally agreed an outline free-trade deal.
The agreement paves the way for trading in goods without tariff barriers between two of the world's biggest economic areas.
However, few specific details are known and a full, workable agreement may take some time.
Two of the most important sectors are Japanese cars and, for Europe, EU farming goods into Japan.
The outline plan was signed in Brussels after a meeting between the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on the eve of a meeting of the G20 group of leading economies in Hamburg.
It comes hard on the heels of the collapse of a long-awaited trade agreement between Japan, the US and other Pacific ring countries, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was scrapped in January by US President Donald Trump.
'Countering' Brexit
The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said the agreement showed the EU's commitment to world trade: "We did it. We concluded EU-Japan political and trade talks. EU is more and more engaged globally."
Mr Tusk also said the deal countered the argument put forward by some of those in favour of Brexit that the EU was unable to promote free trade: "Although some are saying that the time of isolationism and disintegration is coming again, we are demonstrating that this is not the case."
He added that the deal was not just about common trade interests, but reflected "the shared values that underpin our societies, by which I mean liberal democracy, human rights and the rule of law".
Japan is the world's third-largest economy, with a population of about 127 million.
As it stands, the country is Europe's seventh biggest export market.
One of the most important trade categories for the EU is dairy goods.
Japan's appetite for milk and milk-based products has been growing steadily in recent years.
The EU's dairy farmers are struggling with falling demand in its home nations and an ultra-competitive buying climate, which farmers say means they are paid less than the cost of production.
Even once the agreement is fully signed, the deal is likely to have in place long transition clauses of up to 15 years to allow sectors in both countries time to adjust to the new outside competition.

Alibaba reveals Echo-like smart speaker www.bbc.com

The voice-controlled Tmall Genie can be used to play music, run third-party apps and buy goods from the Chinese retail giant's online stores. Like many such devices, it lacks a display.

At launch, it will understand only Mandarin and be sold in the company's domestic market.
It will compete in China against devices already launched by Baidu and JD.com.
Tencent - China's biggest technology company by market capitalisation - has announced it has a similar product in development.
In the West, Amazon's Echo range of smart speakers compete against Google Home. Apple and Microsoft have similar products scheduled for release soon. And Samsung is readying a speaker of its own, powered by its new Bixby virtual assistant, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
Smarter shopping
Alibaba's new product derives its name from the company's e-commerce platform - Tmall - and during a demonstration in Beijing was used to order a delivery of Coca-Cola and buy credit for a phone.
Tmall allows local and international retailers to run their own virtual storefronts on its platform and says it is China's third most visited shopping site.
"It clearly is an advantage if - like Amazon - you can pull consumers into your retail ecosystem with a smart speaker," said Eden Zoller from the technology consultancy Ovum.
"But one thing we need to remember is it's early days for this category, and there remain questions of consumer trust in using the digital assistants to buy goods, on a smartphone or smart home speaker device.
"By that, I mean both the security of the transaction and privacy concerns about how personal data is leveraged and shared."
Alibaba has addressed these concerns in part by using voiceprint-technology to try to restrict purchases to recognised users.
In addition, it has built in support for Alipay, the company's popular online payment system, which is similar to PayPal.
However, to begin with, the company is marketing the device as a "limited beta" release that will help provide feedback before it is ready to mass produce the item.
It will charge 499 yuan ($73; £57) for the product, making it one of the cheapest on the market.

SoftBank aims to raise $3 billion to $5 billion via bond issue: source www.reuters.com

Japan's SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) is targetting raising between $3 billion and $5 billion through an offering of U.S. dollar bonds, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Hague tribunal dismissed complaint against Mongolian government www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Government of Mongolia won in the arbitration dispute with three Chinese investors to Tumurtein Khuder Company. The investors appealed to the permanent court of Arbitration at the Hague in February 2010, concerning the Government agency’s decision on cancellation of Tumurtei khuder company’s license of Tumurtei iron ore mine. On June 30, the arbitral tribunal made decision to dismiss the claimants’ requests in full.

Mongolia Aims To Boost Activity Amongst Foreign Mining Giants With Relaxed Laws www.esiasee.eu

Mining accounts for over 80% of Mongolian exports

Milbank Secures Significant Victory for Mongolia over Chinese SOEs in Treaty-Based Arbitration www.milbank.com

NEW YORK, July 5, 2017 – Mongolia, represented by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, has prevailed in an arbitration brought by Chinese State-Operated Entities’ (SOEs) pursuant to the investment-protection treaty between the two countries following Mongolia’s revocation of a license for the Chinese entities to mine the vast Tumurtei iron ore deposit. The Tribunal’s award of June 30 dismissing all claims has potentially significant implications for Chinese foreign investment worldwide because the identical treaty language appears in the majority of China’s 110 bilateral investment protection treaties with other countries.

The Tribunal’s award parted ways with determinations by two tribunals in prior arbitrations brought by Chinese investors, one confirmed by the Singapore Supreme Court, that found the critical treaty language to be a broad submission to the jurisdiction of international tribunals. In contrast, the Tumurtei Award relied upon evidence of historic Chinese state practices not considered in the prior cases and held that only national courts in the host country of foreign investment, not arbitral tribunals constituted pursuant to the China-Mongolia treaty, were empowered to determine whether the host State had committed an unlawful expropriation.

The final award handed down on June 30, which was unanimous, puts an end to seven years of arbitration. The arbitration was presided over by the former President and current Judge of the International Court of Justice Peter Tomka. A week-long hearing was held at the Peace Palace in The Hague in late 2015. The other members of the arbitration tribunal were Yas Banifatemi, a member of the Shearman & Sterling team that secured the $50 billion arbitration award for Yukos against Russia (by nomination of the Chinese Claimants) and Mark Clodfelter, the former US State Department’s Assistant Legal Adviser for International Claims and Investment Disputes (by nomination of Mongolia).

At a time when Chinese outbound foreign investment has become enormous and is growing, the decision of the arbitral Tribunal has potentially significant implications for Chinese foreign investments around the world. Out of 110 bilateral investment treaties entered into by China and still in force, 70 are treaties of the “1st generation” – that is, early treaties concluded in the 1980’s and 1990’s almost all of which contain the same sort of language restricting access to arbitration to disputes involving the amount of compensation for expropriation. These early treaties reflect China’s distrust of arbitration as a mechanism to resolve disputes with foreign investors at a time when China was predominantly a capital importer hosting foreign investments. It is only around the time that China adopted its so-called “going out” strategy in 2001, shifting its focus to becoming a significant exporter of capital, that a new wave of BITs were signed. In these ‘2nd’ and subsequent generations of Chinese BITs, the arbitration clause was extended to “any disputes concerning an investment” so as better to protect China's outbound investments.

The Tribunal's ruling on the Chinese Treaty departed from prior awards interpreting identical language in other Chinese treaties and similar language in communist-era treaties of Russia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In support of its position, claimants had relied on arbitral awards in Tza Yap Shum v. Peru, EMV v. Czech Republic, Renta v. Russia and Sanum v. Laos. In Sanum, the Singapore Court of Appeal held, in September 2016, following extensive treaty-based arbitration proceedings, that a “narrow interpretation” of the dispute resolution clause of the China-Laos BIT (containing the same language) could “render illusory the availability of access to arbitration” and leave the clause without meaningful effect. In Tza Yap, the arbitral tribunal also agreed that the Chinese claimant’s “interpretation, the broader one, is the most appropriate.” 

The Tumurtei arbitration was the first in which a respondent-State had put forward the argument that international arbitration would be available for the determination of quantum following an expropriation formally “proclaimed” by the State. In the arbitration, Mongolia submitted substantial of China's historic use of such proclaimed expropriations, whether through ordinances or decrees, when its 1st Generation treaties were entered. Thus, Mongolia argued that the critical treaty language had meaningful effect even if construed so as to exclude international review of its revocation of the Tumurtei license.

By unanimous decision, the Tribunal accepted Mongolia’s position and found that the China-Mongolia BIT “restrict[s] the jurisdiction of an ad hoc arbitral tribunal to encompass only disputes which involve the amount of compensation for expropriation.” The Tribunal disagreed with Claimants’ view that the arbitration provision of the BIT would be deprived of any effect in practice, because “[a]rbitration before an ad hoc arbitral tribunal would be available in cases where an expropriation has been formally proclaimed and what is disputed is the amount to be paid by the State to the investor for its expropriated investment. In other words, arbitration will be available where the dispute is indeed limited to the amount of compensation for a proclaimed expropriation.”

Gold rebounds on North Korea’s nuclear testing, Fed minutes in focus www.mining.com

Gold prices picked up Wednesday on North Korea's successful test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and gloomy US economic data.

Mongolia calls for Northeast Asian countries to hold security dialogue www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Under the theme “25 years of CICA: For Asian Security and Development”, the second non-governmental forum of Conference on Interaction and Conference-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) took place in Beijing, China on June 28-29. The forum was attended by over 300 delegates including CICA member states, observer states (organizations) and concerned countries in the region and discussed issues such as security situations in Asia, on how to achieve common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security in Asia and jointly build the Belt and Road.