“The Dalai Lama’s visit by the invitation of Gandan Monastery negatively affected two countries and these two countries have a misunderstanding,” Mongolian Foreign Minister Munkh-Orgil Tsend told the Onoodor newspaper Wednesday. “The government feels sorry for this,’’ he said, adding that the Dalai Lama “probably won’t be visiting Mongolia again during this administration.’’

The Mongolian foreign ministry declined to provide further information when asked about the minister’s comments.

China called off talks with Mongolian senior officials after the Dalai Lama’s four-day visit to Ulaanbaatar beginning Nov. 18. Mongolia has been seeking soft loans from sources including China and the International Monetary Fund as it struggles with a $1 billion budget gap and looming debt repayments.

A traditionally Buddhist nation that has deep historical ties to Tibet, Mongolia has hosted the current Dalai several times since 1979. Past visits have been met with reprisals from Beijing, which considers the Dalai Lama to be a separatist leader and routinely condemns nations that give him a platform to speak.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing Wednesday in Beijing that China “attaches great importance to the explicit statement made by the Mongolian foreign minister.”

“China’s stand on Tibet-related issues is firm and clear,” Hua said. “We hope that Mongolia will truly learn lessons from this incident, truly respect the core interests of China, honor its promise and make efforts to improve the relations between China and Mongolia.”

The estimate was presented at a meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday between 4 groups preparing for the Games.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, the president of the organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, and the cabinet minister in charge of the Tokyo Games, Tamayo Marukawa, attended the meeting. The Vice President of the International Olympic Committee, John Coates, participated through a video-conference system.

At the start of the talks, Governor Koike revealed her decision to build a new volleyball arena in Tokyo's Ariake waterfront district as initially planned for the 2020 Games.
The decision on the volleyball venue had been postponed at their meeting last month.

The organizing committee said the total cost of the games would be between 13.6 billion dollars and 15.3 billion dollars.

It proposed it would pay up to 4.2 billion dollars, and other organizations would shoulder the remaining 11 billion dollars.

Committee president Mori called Wednesday's meeting a new start. He said the Tokyo Metropolitan government and his committee share the same goal of reducing expenses.

Mori added that he hopes to begin discussions on role-sharing arrangements with Tokyo and other related municipalities as soon as possible.

Koike indicated that detailed talks will be needed on ways to divide the costs other than those shouldered by the organizing committee. She said methods to reduce expenses and increase the organizing committee's revenues also need further discussion.

Koike added that the decision on role-sharing is a domestic matter, and she hopes the Japanese government, the organizing committee, and the Tokyo government can start discussions early next year.

The financing comes from NDB’s first package of loans, worth a combined $811 million, which was approved by the bank's board in April to fund projects in China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

The project will equip the roofs of office buildings in Shanghai’s industrial parks with solar panels to generate up to 100 MW of electricity for the companies operating there.

"China which is already a world leader in the use of clean energy sources is now to embark on the path of promoting green technologies. In 2015, Beijing invested in renewable energy more than Europe and the United States together. This project is a demonstration of China's green technology commitment," said NDB’s President Kundapur Kamath on Wednesday after the signing ceremony.

Chinese Deputy Finance Minister Yaobin Shi said the project was a good example of "farsightedness and investment in clean technologies" and showed the bank’s commitment to promote infrastructure projects and sustainable development projects among BRICS countries.

The decision to approve the first loans, which are to be handed out in tranches, has been endorsed by the NDB on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank spring meetings in Washington DC.

The NDB decided to provide $300 million to Brazil, $81 million to China, $250 million to India and $180 million to South Africa.

In Russia, the NDB has financed the construction of two small hydroelectric power stations at the cost of $185 million.

The bank estimates that renewable energy projects with a capacity of 2.37MW can help reduce harmful emissions by 4 million tons annually.

Headquartered in Shanghai, the BRICS bank was founded in 2014 by China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa and officially opened for business a year later. The goal of the bank, with an initial authorized capital of $100 billion, is to fund sustainable development infrastructure projects in emerging economies.