The minister added that the construction of a third joint power plant with Russia, with the capacity of 1,400 MW, has already begun.

Last year, the Iranian vice president and head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi talked about the plans to construct two new nuclear units in cooperation with Russia. He stressed that the process could take up to ten years and would cost $10 billion.

Earlier this year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Moscow wanted to finalize the agreement with Iran and help the country build more power plants.

Moscow and Tehran have been deepening ties in a number of sectors, including oil, defense, and fisheries.

Following a decade of total economic isolation energy-hungry Iran is eager to start building power plants and update its energy infrastructure. Russian companies are likely to be among the preferred bidders.

Russian energy major Gazprom has sealed a cooperation agreement with its Iranian counterpart for the development of local gas deposits.

During his visit to Moscow last month, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani highlighted the importance of the energy sector in bilateral relations and the possible creation of a free trade zone between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union that includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The customers who used to head to greenhouses in the rural areas to get fresh vegetables and fruits in different varieties, are now able to buy these products with a tag ‘locally-made’ in supermarkets and grocery stores of Ulaanbaatar.

“Chandmani” Agro-park, with an aim to provide fresh and organic products to the population of Ulaanbaatar, is planning to supply its products to military units in the future.

Mongolia is aiming to establish domestic factories interconnected with each other as an Industrial Technological Park following the example of countries with highly developed industry.

The agricultural and technological “Chandmani” Agro-park is working to establish shopping centers and factories to manufacture final products of milk, meat, fruits and berries and vegetables on its 80 hectares of land in Bayanchandmani soum within the framework of “Food Production” project. The Agro-park owns a total of 1900 hectares of land.

One reason for this is that some problems that startups aim to solve are common to the region. A business model or product that addresses such a challenge has a large, ready-made market at hand, potentially creating the next Asian unicorn.

Philippine startup Salt is a great example. Salt -- short for "sustainable alternative lighting" -- found itself in the spotlight when co-founder Aisa Mijeno shared the stage with former U.S. President Barack Obama and Alibaba Group Holding Chairman Jack Ma Yun at the 2015 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Manila.

The company makes lamps that use saltwater as the catalyst for a fuel cell, instead of the kerosene that fuels lamps across Southeast Asia in areas without electricity. Mijeno came up with the idea for a saltwater lamp after living with a remote tribe in Kalinga, in the northern Philippines. During her monthlong stay with the Butbut, Mijeno learned that people had to walk at least six hours to the nearest town to buy kerosene.

Enter Salt's lamp, which, the company says, can last six months when used eight hours a day and maintained properly.

"We were trying to determine what the staple items in every household in the Philippines were, and we found out that there are actually three staple items: salt, water and rice. That's the main reason we used salt water as the catalyst ... to generate electricity," Mijeno told the Nikkei Asian Review in an interview last year.

The company was founded in 2014 when it joined Ideaspace Foundation, an incubator that helps fund and develop innovations with commercial potential. Salt was selected by Ideaspace as one of the year's top-10 projects and used its prize money to start working on a prototype. It has since delivered over a thousand lamps to remote communities in the Philippines, and partnered with a local manufacturer to begin mass production.

Fashion for the faithful

For Diajeng Lestari in Indonesia, the "problem" that needed addressing was helping Muslim women express their fashion sense while maintaining their modesty. This led her to create Hijup in 2011, a pioneering Islamic fashion website. The online shopping mall offers clothing and accessories aimed mainly at Muslim women.

Hijup is short for "hijab-up," as in make up or dress up. The hijab is the headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

Last week the price of Australia free-on-board premium hard coking coal jumped to highest since the second quarter of 2011. That price spike was also the result of flooding in Queensland that saw quarterly contract prices negotiated at an all time high of $330.

Cyclone Debbie caused serious damage to key rail lines serving mines in the state of Queensland and while three lines have now reopened according to operator Aurizon, but large sections of the Goonyella railroad in the centre of the network is only be expected to be up and running in a week's time.

Earlier expectations were that roughly 12–13 million tonnes of Australian met coal cargoes destined for China, India and Japan could be delayed, but Aurizon said this week up to 21 million tonnes have been affected.

A total of 221 million tonnes of coal was exported last year from Queensland, according to the Queensland Resources Council quoted by Reuters and of that at least 75% be steelmaking coal.

Customs data released last week showed Chinese imports of coal – both thermal and metallurgical coal – in March rose 12.2% from a year ago and 25% from February to 22.1 million tonnes.

The global met coal market is around 300 million tonnes per year with premium hard coking coal or PHCC constituting more than a third of the total market. More than half of PHCC seaborne coal come from Australian producers according to TSI data.

A reduction in allowable work days at China's coal mines last year sparked a massive rally in coal prices, lifting met coal prices to multi-year high of $308.80 per tonne by November from $75 a tonne earlier in 2016. But the speculative rally fizzled soon fizzled out with the commodity hitting a 2017 low of $150.10 a tonne last month.

While coking coal is returning to more expected levels, iron ore's unnerving decline – more than a third over just the last month – appears to have been arrested.

The Northern China import price of 62% Fe content ore advanced for a second day on Thursday trading at $64.70 a tonne after dipping to a six-month low of $61.50 per dry metric tonne on Tuesday according to data supplied by The Steel Index.