The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and Mongolia on the occasion of the 4th U.S.-Mongolia Economic Policy Dialogue.

To strengthen further the U.S.-Mongolia Strategic Partnership and economic relationship, representatives of Mongolia and the United States held the 4th bilateral Economic Policy Dialogue on February 2, 2023, in Washington, D.C. During the meeting, the two nations discussed joint responses to economic challenges, explored opportunities to deepen bilateral trade and investment, and decided to pursue cooperation in key areas, including critical minerals, clean energy, and the digital economy.

U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Whitney Baird and State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia Ankhbayar Nyamdorj co-chaired the dialogue. U.S. participants included representatives from the Department of State, National Security Council, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Millennium Challenge Corporation, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Treasury, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, Export-Import Bank, Transportation Security Administration, and Federal Aviation Administration. Mongolian participants included representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry, Ministry of Economy and Development, Ministry of Energy, and Ministry of Mining and Heavy Industry.

The United States and Mongolia reiterated that countries around the world should partner to hasten global economic recovery, including by working to overcome supply chain disruptions, and affirmed the international community should unite in efforts to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The two nations reaffirmed their strong desire to build on the overall U.S.-Mongolia Strategic Partnership, deepen the economic relationship in areas of mutual interest, and pursue opportunities for cooperation through existing and new mechanisms, including capacity building and trade promotion. They further reiterated the importance of strengthening Mongolia’s business climate, including through full implementation of the United States-Mongolia Agreement on Transparency in Matters Related to International Trade and Investment. Both sides noted with satisfaction the signing of a Memorandum of Consultations (MOC) marking the successful negotiation of an Air Transport Agreement between the Government of the United States and the Government of Mongolia on January 24, 2023, an important step toward establishing scheduled, nonstop passenger flights between Mongolia and the United States, thus further expanding economic and people-to-people ties.

The two nations discussed potential collaboration on projects to advance Mongolia’s economic development, diversification, and independence, with a focus on renewable energy and energy security, critical minerals, transportation, food security, intellectual property rights, and the digital economy. The two sides also reviewed joint development programs, including the up to $462 million Millennium Challenge Corporation Water Compact, which entered into force in March 2021 and will expand Ulaanbaatar’s water supply by more than 80 percent. They noted the USAID Mongolia Energy Governance program, which will promote the development of a modern energy sector and facilitate sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Mongolia commended the financial assistance from the United States to improve herders’ preparedness to overcome severe winter climate conditions.

The two nations highlighted the bilateral relationship is grounded in shared democratic values. They discussed expanded efforts to strengthen the rule of law and governance, fight corruption, and uphold fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of expression online, noting that a strong democracy and a strong economy go hand in hand.

The United States provided information on its initiatives in the Indo-Pacific in support of a free and open region that is connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient, through potential partnerships in areas including infrastructure, critical minerals, environmental protection, and technology. The two sides intend to further explore possibilities to implement joint projects and work with like-minded partners in and out of the region.

The United States and Mongolia reviewed their 2018 Roadmap for an Expanded Economic Partnership and expressed mutual intent to update it to reflect the broadening scope of bilateral cooperation by including new areas and opportunities for partnership.

The United States and Mongolia decided to maintain the exchange of high-level visits, including holding the next Annual Bilateral Consultations and strategic dialogue in 2023 in Washington, D.C.

Australian rare earths producer Northern Minerals (ASX: NTU) said on Tuesday that the federal government had prevented its largest shareholder, China’s Yuxiao Fund, from raising its stake in the company on grounds of national interest.

Yuxiao Fund needed the Foreign Investment Review Board’s (FIRB) approval to increase its holding in Northern Minerals to 19.9% from 9.92%.

Beijing has condemned Australia for previously blocking Chinese investment on national security grounds, saying those moves have contributed to a years-long diplomatic freeze.

A report by consultant at KPMG and The University of Sydney released last year, showed that Chinese investment in Australia has been steadily decreasing, falling almost 70% in 2021 to the lowest level since 2007.

The Labor government, in power since May last year, has moved to repair diplomatic relations with China after clashes in recent years over trade, influence in the South Pacific, and the origins of the covid-19 pandemic.

Chinese companies, including state-owned steelmaker Sinosteel, say they have yet to see the results of efforts to mend ties placed by the new administration.

Chinese companies invested a total of $110.1 billion in Australia between 2007 and 2021. (Courtesy of KPMG/ University of Sydney.)

According to Sinosteel Australia managing director, David Sun, the FIRB, which has the power to block foreign investment, has been disproportionately rejecting Chinese investors.

“When FIRB rejects one case, they scare many cases,” Sun said in a November presentation at a conference in Sydney.

Northern Minerals has been focused on fine-tuning its heavy rare earths processing system through a pilot plant, which could make the Western Australia-based miner one world’s first significant heavy rare earth producer outside of China.

Northern Minerals says China’s mining and processing techniques only generate grades of 20 to 40 ppm of dysprosium.

The company’s board recently approved a strategic partnership with Iluka Resources Limited to provide it access to feedstock rich in heavy rare earths materials dysprosium and terbium.

The company’s flagship project, Browns Range, is slated to become Australia’s only heavy rare earth mine and the first relevant dysprosium producer outside of China.

The operation, which is expected to have a productive life of 11 years, can yield ore with heavy rare earths grade of between 600 and 800 parts per million dysprosium.

Browns Range consists of seven deposits, with a total mineral resource of 10.8 million tonnes.

(With files from Reuters and Bloomberg)

The Government of Mongolia and the Ministry of Road and Transport have been paying attention to expanding the capacity and operation of the transport and logistics sector. Last year, AH 4a – a road corridor connecting Xinjiang of the PRC to the Russian Federation via the Yarant /Ulaanbaishint/ Tsagaanuur road was opened for transportation. In addition, the national railway network has been expanding and the projects for Artssuuri-Shiveekhuren western railway and Ereentsav-Bichigt eastern railway have been started.

Mongolia has joined the Asian Highway Network, Trans-Asian Railway Network, and Intergovernmental Agreement on Dry Ports, initiated by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and has been actively working toward common commitments. Minister of Road and Transport Development S. Byambatsogt met with the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana and agreed to cooperate on projects and programs to build dry ports.

While noting the necessity to create a dry port in Mongolia to increase the carrying capacity of freight transportation, ensure fast clearance, and increase the volume of transit freights, the Minister of Road and Transport Development S. Byambatsogt said, “We are planning to build dry ports in International airport in Khushig Valley, Altanbulag port and Zamiin-uud port at first, and then, in Khovd and Dornod aimags.” To that extent, Minister S. Byambatsogt expressed his intention to cooperate with UN ESCAP on developing a feasibility study for the dry port to be built in Mongolia, determining its scope of operation, and settling the investment and infrastructure issues. Moreover, the Minister asked Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana for support in linking the Khovd-Altai-Bayankhongor-Arvaikheer-Mandalgovi-Choir route to the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian Highway Network of ESCAP and making it an official route of this network.

Expressing her appreciation for the fact that Mongolia is paying special attention and putting concerted efforts into developing the transport and logistics sector and implementing strategically important projects, the Under-Secretary-General of the UN ESCAP Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana said that she would pledge all-round support for Mongolian dry port and railway construction projects.

Australia’s Elixir Energy’s pilot project in its Nomgon IX CBM project in Mongolia has now been operational for over 100 days and the production from the Nomgon-8 and 9 wells reached 200,000 ft3/day for the first time, it said on March 1.

The company’s drilling programme for 2023 is due to start next month. “Our Nomgon pilot project continues to deliver the goods with an excellent flow rate from what are simple and shallow vertical wells. The pilot will continue in the weeks to come and we will provide further updates as it moves towards its conclusion,” Elixir managing director Neil Young said.

Elixir is also planning a green hydrogen pilot project in Mongolia. The company in January last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Mongolia Green Finance Corp to support project finance for the first phase of its Gobi H2 project.

To set actual market prices of coal and ensure accurate, and prompt delivery of trading information to sellers, buyers, and other participants, the discussion on “Electronic Trading of Export Coal” was held successfully at Premier Tuushin Hotel on February 27.

Within the “Procedure on Electronic Trading of Export Coal” framework approved by Resolution No. 466 of the Government of Mongolia, export coal that meets “Coal Classification MNS 6457:2022” will be traded in an open, transparent, and fair method. It will establish the prerequisites for fair market price determination and accurate and timely trading information delivery to all stakeholders, including buyers, sellers, and other parties.

The Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry J. Ganbaatar, the Head of National Committee for Port Revitalization Kh. Bulgantuya, Financial Regulatory Commission Deputy Chairman T. Tserenbadral, CEO of the Mongolian Stock Exchange Kh. Altai opened the discussion. The Director of the Business Development Department T. Khash-erdene presented the regulations and instructions for regulating coal trading.

A leading Kalmyk activist who says he may face persecution if he is deported to Russia has not been allowed to enter Mongolia over his expired Russian passport.

Batyr Boromangnaev, who is deputy of Kalmyk’s self-governing Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk people and former leader of the Yabloko party's branch in Kalmykia, is currently stuck at immigration services in Ulan Bator's international airport.

He told RFE/RL on February 28 that his passport expired while he was temporarily detained in Kazakhstan, which he passed through en route to Mongolia.

According to Boromangnaev, Mongol authorities tried to deport him to Kazakhstan, the last country he was in before arriving in Mongolia, but the move was postponed until March 2 after he filed a request addressed to Mongolia's chief of the Border Guard Service not to deport him.

"Formally, the border guarding service officers are carrying out their duties and act in accordance with the regulations, but they in fact are trying to remove from the country a person who may face persecution on politically motivated charges," Boromangnaev told RFE/RL.

"I thought I was going to the cradle of the Mongol people, to a democratic country, where my situation would be fully understood," he added.

The Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk people has regularly coordinated Kalmyk activists' congresses in Russia's Republic of Kalmykia near the North Caucasus region since 2015.

After Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most of the group's members fled the country.

In October 2022, Boromangnaev's group published a declaration on Kalmykia's independence from Russia.

The influx of Russian citizens, mostly of Kalmyk, Buryat, and Tyvan origin, to Mongolia has dramatically increased since President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization to support the war in Ukraine in late September last year.

Kalmyks in Russia's southwest and Buryats in Siberia are mostly Buddhist, Mongol-speaking ethnic groups. Tyvans are another mostly Buddhist indigenous people in Siberia, whose language is Turkic.

Glencore Plc was ordered by a federal judge in New York to pay $700 million as a criminal punishment for a global bribery scheme orchestrated by the Swiss-based commodities trading and mining giant.

US District Judge Lorna G. Schofield on Tuesday imposed the sentence, following the terms of a plea deal with prosecutors entered when Glencore pleaded guilty in May to a single count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company must pay a fine of $428.5 million and $272.2 million in criminal forfeiture.

The penalty, one of the largest in a foreign corruption case, is part of the $1.5 billion Glencore agreed to pay to resolve bribery and market-manipulation probes in the US, UK and Brazil. Glencore units agreed to plead guilty to a list of charges ranging from bribery and corruption in South America and Africa, to price manipulation in US fuel-oil markets.

Glencore was guilty of “a very serious offense,” Schofield said, though he noted the company’s efforts to cooperate with the government and to beef up compliance procedures after receiving a federal grand jury subpoena in 2018.

Prosecutors claimed Glencore paid more than $100 million in bribes to government officials in Brazil, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela. They said Glencore made $315 million from the scheme.

In addition to the fine and forfeiture, Glencore will spend five years on probation, continue with improvements to its ethics and compliance programs and employ an outside monitor for three years.

Glencore conducted an internal investigation, eventually disciplining more than 20 people, a lawyer for the company said during the hearing Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. Glencore produced more than 1 million documents, many from outside the US, and hired a forensic accounting firm to look into suspect trading activity.

On Monday, Schofield ruled Glencore must pay $29.6 million to the founders of a company that provided healthcare services in 11 African countries, but was forced to shut down. Crusader Health claimed it was driven out of business after Glencore bribed a public official in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to throw out a lawsuit brought by Crusader against a Glencore subsidiary.

In September, the commodity firm was sentenced in Connecticut to pay $486 million in fines and forfeitures in a case in which Glencore admitted conspiring to manipulate oil-price benchmarks. In November, a London judge imposed a £276 million ($333 million) penalty for Glencore’s effort to bribe government officials for access to oil cargoes across Africa.

The case is US v. Glencore, 22-cr-00297, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(By Bob Van Voris)

The European Union Commission has officially confirmed to the Mongolian National Federation of Pasture User Groups (MNPUGs) the official opening of the EUROPEAN PROTECTED GEOGRAPHIC INDICATION OF ORIGIN (PGI/IGP) CERTIFICATION process of the “SUSTAINABLE CASHMERE” produced in Mongolia (МОНГОЛ ТОГТВОРТОЙ НООЛУУР / MONGOL TOGTVORTOI NOOLUUR).

MNFPUGs today has become the herders’ largest collective organization in Mongolia, whose 1.754 associated PUGs of herders and cooperatives and its 93.000+ member herder families (equivalent to 1/3 of the total Mongolian population and 70% of the rural population), produce about 28% of the worldwide cashmere fibre.

MNFPUG’s new “business model” for a “GI certified” and fully traceable value chain has won Milan EXPO 2015 award as the best project for a Sustainable and Community driven initiative for Natural Resource management in the world. SDC’s Green Gold’s “Responsible Nomads” (RN) Code of Best Herding Practices, following intense work with the MoFALI, has been recognized as the Mongolian Government’s only National Standard for Sustainable Herding and Rangeland Management (MNS 6891:2020). MNFPUGs has obtained the Certification of Origin (GI) of Cashmere fibre herded in compliance with the RN Standard from the Mongolian Patent Office (IPOM) and engineered a sophisticated blockchain-based traceability system, to be used by end-buyers for certifying their Cashmere products’ exact origins and chains of supply.

Ensuring a source of Cashmere fibre at origin has also become an increasingly vital matter to European & Italian textile industries, and – more generally – to all Western Luxury brands due to frequently insufficient stock levels, caused by greater global demand for fine Cashmere products.

The chain of value disruption which European Textile industries experienced, especially during the COVID outbreak, is somehow similar to those western economies are facing in other sectors, which rely on foreign supplies of, for instance, micro-conductors and microchips, solar panels, energy, and gas. We expect the registration process to take 6 to 8 months, being it a mere recognition of already existing MNPUG’s Mongolian GI certifications, following both WTO TRIPS reciprocity agreements and the EU PGI/IGP Regulation. Sustainable Cashmere of Mongolia PGI’s Book of Specifications (BoS) foresees the fibre to be obtained from Sustainable Herding following the “Responsible Nomads” Code of Best Herding Practices (MNS 6891:2020 Government standard), and ​be processed in Mongolia following the “Mongolian Noble Fibre” Code of Practice (MNS 6809:2019 Government standard).

The European PGI Certification scheme will therefore ensure to international end-consumers the quality, origin, and true sustainability of the Cashmere Fibre which their products are made of, in compliance with the Government of Mongolia’s official standards.

Making Mongolian “Nomadic” Cashmere distinctive and truly unique (e.g. compared to Cashmere farmed intensively in Inner Mongolia), will also allow global Luxury brands to prove transparently a new, priceless, storytelling. To make it short, the MONGOL TOGTVORTOI NOOLUUR European PGI certification will deliver big added value to the whole Mongolian Cashmere Sector.

The “Sustainable Cashmere of Mongolia PGI” mark, according to MNFPUG's italian partner Mr. Francesco Saldarini, will be issued to any Mongolian producer which will comply with the Mongol Togtvortoi Nooluur’s PGI Book of Specifications, and it’ll therefore be a tremendous incentive to promote furthermore Rangeland Preservation, Animal Welfare, and a truly Responsible and Sustainable production. The combination of the European PGI Scheme and the compliance to those only valid and official Government Standards for sustainable production will also void the harm and the confusion caused on international markets by fake “sustainability certifications” for Cashmere fibre, backed by foreign private interests. The European PGI certification will ultimately boost bilateral economic relations with Europe and the USA in the Cashmere sector and deliver big added value to Mongolia’s GDP.

For all said reasons, MNPUGs is keen to extend furthermore its know-how to the Government of Mongolia and the MWCA, and to share the value it’s building with all the Cashmere Sector Stakeholders. MNFPUG’s social role and the importance of its plan of action for supporting the entire Mongolian Cashmere Sector, have been endorsed by the US Government (cf. USAID & USTR 28.2.2021 Report to the Government of Mongolia) and the Italian Government (cf. 22.6.2021 Italy – Mongolia “Bilateral technical economic commission,” co-chaired by the Minister of Agriculture and the Light Industry and by U/S the Hon. Manlio di Stefano). MNPUGs has seeded its precious know-how nationwide, and we’ve tendered to other stakeholders for jointly managing several projects, including some which were funded by the European Union such as – for instance - the so-called "Step Ecolab” program, which the MWCA also is a co-applicant of. MNPUG’s new “business model” for a “GI certified” and fully traceable value chain (and their underlying technical papers and tools) are scalable, and they could be easily used for delivering value to other Sectors in Mongolia with similar needs (e.g., for the Meat and Dairy products chains of value).

The MoFALI and the MWCA Association, which MNPUGs shares the very same “final goals to achieve” with, have acted greatly in establishing the “Mongolian Noble Fibres” Code of Practices (MNS 6809:2019 Government standard) and the Mongolian Sustainable Textile Production (MNS 6926:2021 Government standard) which will ensure the compliance of Mongolian industries to process fibres (e.g., Cashmere, Yak, Camel and Baby Camel) in an environmental-friendly way, also respecting highest international labor standards.