For the first time, a female legionnaire, a foreign player, has joined the Mongolia's 3x3 women's national basketball team.

Canadian national team player Timbilla Rashida signed a contract to play for Mongolian professional club 'Ulaanbaatar Amazons' in the FIBA 3x3 Women's Series to be held this year.

Previously, a Canadian player Steve Ser signed a contract with Ulaanbaatar MMC team. Thus, for the first time, Mongolian teams will compete in the new FIBA season with one male and one female legionnaires.

In the first quarter of 2022, Mongolia traded with 126 countries from all over the world, and the total trade turnover reached USD 3.6 billion, of which USD 1.9 billion were exports and USD 1.7 billion were imports. The total foreign trade turnover increased by USD 108.7 million (3.1 percent), where imports increased by USD 167.0 million (11.0 percent) and exports decreased by USD 58.3 million (2.9 percent) compared to the same period of the previous year. In March 2021, exports increased by USD 121.3 million (18.9 percent) and imports increased by USD 171.8 million (35.7 percent) compared to the previous month.

The foreign trade balance was in surplus of USD 476.6 million in the first quarter of 2021 and while it was in surplus of USD 251.4 million in the first quarter of 2022, decreased by USD 225.3 million compared to the same period of the previous year. In March 2022, Trade balance surplus decreased by USD 50.5 million from previous month. Trade with China reached USD 2.1 billion in the first 3 months of 2022, which is accounting 56.6 percent of the total trade turnover

Copper concentrates and bituminous coal accounted for 46.5 percent and 41.0 percent of total exports to China, respectively, gold accounted for 99.8 percent of total export to Switzerland.

In the first quarter of 2022, USD 58.3 million decrease in exports from the same period of the previous year was resulted from USD 16.7 million decrease in coal exports

In the first quarter of 2022, USD 121.3 million increase in exports from the previous month was mainly due to USD 166.4 million increase in bituminous coal exports

In the first quarter of 2022, 32.0 percent of the total imports were from Russia, 31.2 percent -- from China, 8.2 percent-- from Japan, 4.8 percent-- from the Republic of Korea, 3.5 percent-- was from USA and 2.5 percent -- from Germany, which are accounting for 82.1 percent of the total imports.

In the first quarter of 2022, 57.1 percent of the total imports from Russia were petroleum products, 71.2 percent of the total imports from Japan were cars, and 6.6 percent of the total imports from China was electricity, 5.8 percent was trucks and 87.6 percent was imports of other products. The USD 167.0 million increase in imports from the same period of the previous year was mainly due to USD 90.4 million increase in petrol, USD 28.0 million increase in cars, USD 15.3 million increase in diesel.

Exports of mineral products, natural or cultured stones, precious metal, jewelry and textile articles products made up 97.3 percent of the total export. On the other hand, 61.8 percent of the total imports was mineral products, machinery, equipment and electric appliances, transport vehicle and its spare parts and food products.

Source: National Statistics Office

As a new CEO has been appointed at ‘New Ulaanbaatar International Airport’ LLC, Minister of Road and Transport Development L.Khaltar received executives of the airport management company on April 25.

The Minister highlighted how the airport’s former CEO successfully launched operations during the difficult time of the pandemic, and served a crucial role in regularizing operations and ensuring flight safety. He said “During his term as the Prime Minister, President of Mongolia U.Khurelsukh held talks with the Japanese Prime Minister about putting the new airport into operation in a short amount of time. In its framework, a working group was established by the Government. I highly value the contributions made by former CEO Mr. Kato Takeo in the airport’s opening.”

In turn, former CEO of New Ulaanbaatar International Airport LLC Kato Takeo said, “Although the airport was constructed with a soft loan from the Government of Japan, and is currently managed by a Japanese company, I am confident that the company will continue to cooperate in further improving the airport’s operations.”

Minister of Road and Transport Development L.Khaltar congratulated Mr. Kitanaka Takefumi on his appointment as CEO, and expressed the ministry’s readiness to cooperate. He also noted how the public expects Japanese quality services at the new airport, requesting attention to be paid to the matter.

During the meeting, the Minister also introduced the decision that was made regarding the construction of a railroad near the airport in Khushig Valley, and the establishment of a special economic zone, a new residential area, and a center for transport and logistics.

The airport management company’s new CEO pledged to put in efforts into enhancing the airport’s safety and comfort, and noted the importance of increasing the number of flights being received at the airport in order to successfully run the airport. Thus, in order to fully utilize the capacity of Chinggis Khaan International Airport, he then expressed readiness to cooperate with the Ministry.

In the first quarter of 2022, 96.3 million pieces of securities worth MNT 95.4 trillion were traded at the national stock market, increased by MNT 29.5 billion (44.7 percent) while it is decreased 149.4 million pieces of securities (60.8 percent) compared to the same period of the previous year.

In March 2022, total sales of stocks reached MNT 13.9 billion, decreased by MNT 30.0 billion (68.4 percent) from the previous month and decreased by MNT 10.2 (42.3 percent) billion from the same period of the previous year. The number of pieces of traded securities reached 20.3 million, decreased by 20.4 million pieces (50.2 percent) from the previous month and decreased by 47.6 (70.1 percent) million pieces from the same period of the previous year.

In March 2022, the average of indices of the top 20 financial markets was 38023.4 units, decreased by 2480.7 units from the previous month while it is increased by 4071.2 units from the same period of 2021.

In March 2022, the total value of joint-stock companies operating at stock markets reached MNT 5.4 trillion, decreased by MNT 144.0 billion (2.6%) from the previous month, but increased by MNT 1.7 trillion (45.6 percent) from the same period of the previous year.

Source: National Statistics Office

Mongolia is participating in the 59th Venice Biennale, an international contemporary art exhibition, with artist Z.Munkhtsetseg's project ‘Gunees gund’ (in English. ‘A Journey Through Vulnerability’).

In the Mongolian pavilion, artist J.Munkhtsetseg presents her works of over 15 years. The opening of the exhibition was attended by more than 100 Mongolian and foreign visitors led by the Minister of Culture of Mongolia Ch. Nomin and Ambassador of Mongolia to Italy Ts. Narantungalag.

The main exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani from Italy, features more than 1400 exhibits created by 213 artists from 58 countries. The artists from five countries (Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Uganda and Oman) are participating in the exhibition this year for the first time. As for artist J.Munkhtsetseg, she is presenting her artworks in the exhibition for the fourth time.

Through her artworks, artist J. Munkhtsetseg wants to share with visitors her ideas about pain, anxiety, healing and revival. In general, the artworks on display depict the nature of the world, and compassion.

Being continuously held since 1895, renowned artists display their works at the Venice Biennale of Fine Arts, known as the ‘Art World Olympics’. The Biennale also brings together world-renowned art critics, curators, art organizations, more than 8,000 major international media outlets, and influential world politicians and businessmen.

ULAANBAATAR -- Mongolia is a leading player in the global market for wool -- for cashmere from goats that is.

The country is home to 30 million sheep, too. But unlike the merino breed prevalent in Australia and New Zealand whose soft, fine wool is valued for sweaters, scarves and other clothing almost as much as cashmere, Mongolia's 15 native breeds produce a fleece too thick and coarse for such use.

Until recently, most Mongolians lived in circular tents called ger which were covered with sheep's wool felt to retain heat amid the country's freezing winters. But urbanization has cut such demand.

With prices for sheep's wool stagnating around 2,000 Mongolian tugrik (76 U.S. cents) a kilogram, local entrepreneurs have begun cooking up new uses for the material, giving hope that the country can move up from its reliance on commodity exports as well as boost farm incomes.

Tsogbadrakh Bayanjav is one of the wool pioneers. During his time as a Mongolian trade representative in Europe, he came across scientists at Humboldt University in Germany who were experimenting with turning sheep's wool, which naturally contains nitrogen and potassium, into organic fertilizer.

Now at a smelly factory in Tuv Province southeast of Ulaanbaatar, Tsogbadrakh's company Monpellets applies the Germans' technology, using imported machines to clean wool to remove bacteria and then crush it into a powder.

The powder in turn is pressed into cylindrical pellets that can retain 3.5 times their weight in water and support plant growth for up to 10 months, according to the company's tests.

Monpellets fertilizer can support plant growth for up to 10 months, according to company tests. (Photo by Uugansukh Byamba)

Monpellets exported 20 tons of pellets to Germany in 2019, then doubled its foreign sales the next year. After hitting 80 tons in 2021, Tsogbadrakh aims to bring in 240,000 euros ($261,000) in revenue by exporting 220 tons this year and is seeking financing to build a second factory.

Tsogbadrakh brags about the performance of his pellets in laboratory tests and field trials. "A mining company in Bayankhonhor Province struggled to grow vegetation at the site of its old mine, but after using our fertilizer, vegetation appeared," he said.

His next ambition is to use the pellets to support organic greenhouse farming in Tuv that would be capable of competing with imported Chinese vegetables. "I'm looking for a partner who will share the same vision with me," he said.

Meanwhile in Darkhan, an industrial city near Mongolia's frontier with Russia, Byambadorj Mendbayar's company Eco Wool has taken a fresh look at sheep's wool as an insulator.

After seven years of testing and developing, the company began exporting rolls of chemical-free sheep's wool insulation to Japan in 2018 as well as selling to local customers.

Byambadorj says the sheep's wool insulation provides almost seven times better thermal resistance than fiberglass and is highly fire resistant. It also absorbs noise and moisture, a useful feature in humid climates. By using local wool, Eco Wool can sell its insulation at less than $70 per 10 sq. meters versus over $100 for comparable Merino-based products.

The ger, the traditional Mongolian home, is covered with a felt made from sheep's wool for insulation. © Reuters

"Wool not only traps air between fibers, but air is also trapped inside the fibers, retaining more heat," said Enkhtuya Dorj, a professor of textile engineering at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Ulaanbaatar. "That is why wool is the perfect insulation material."

Unfortunately, Chinese border closures to control COVID have disrupted exports for Eco Wool as well as much bigger Mongolian companies. This has made Byambadorj more reliant on the local market where construction is still booming.

Perhaps the most unlikely new use for sheep's wool is in cosmetics. Helen Botanical Beauty has been selling an organic exfoliating soap which has a wool felt wrapper enclosing a ball of soap made from sheep tail fat and other natural ingredients.

"We try to use our domestic organic resources as much as we can," said Bayasgalan Burenchudur, founder of the Ulaanbaatar-based startup. The company has been shipping soap to Germany and other European countries, as well as selling it through souvenir shops at Mongolia's international airport and tourist sites.

Helen recently started producing sheep's wool balls for use in clothes' dryers as an alternative to fabric softener or plastic balls and has secured trial orders from the U.S. and Germany.

"If there were no COVID, we could have shined even brighter," Bayasgalan said.

Mongolia's health ministry confirmed 15 new COVID-19 infections on April 25.

10 new cases were recorded in Ulaanbaatar, 5 cases were detected in the regions.

No new related deaths have been recorded in Mongolia since March 10, and the country's COVID-19 death toll remains at 2,108.

When Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while still a Ukrainian presidential candidate, was asked about his childhood years in the Mongolian mining town of Erdenet, he said that he remembers one word very clearly – “baihgui”. It’s an expression that means “we do not have it”, and was illustrative of the deprivation of the time, when Mongolia’s independence from the Soviet Union was nominal at best and grocery store shelves empty. Today while Zelenskiy is leading his nation against Russian aggression, Moscow is working to secure Mongolia as a junior partner for a new strategically important natural gas pipeline to China.

The idea of a trans-Mongolian gas pipeline is not new and was revived by Mongolia’s pro-Russian President Battulga Khaltmaa at the 2018 Eastern Economic Forum. In 2019, with a tacit approval from Beijing, and Gazprom, Mongolia’s state-owned Erdenes Mongol launched a feasibility study of the construction of a Mongolian leg of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline – known as the “Soyuz-Vostok” pipeline.

As bne IntelliNews reported, most of Russia’s oil and gas pipeline infrastructure goes west to deliver 60% of Russia’s oil and 70% of its gas to Europe. But with energy sanctions looming over Russia, it is scrambling to develop more gas and oil pipelines to Asia, where Moscow has more friends and willing customers. So far only the Power of Siberia 1 gas pipeline and Eastern Pacific-Siberian Ocean (ESPO) oil pipelines run east to the Asian markets, both of them built in the last decade.

In early 2022 Mongolian authorities and Gazprom approved the feasibility study, notwithstanding the fact that Power of Siberia 2’s feasibility study is still ongoing. A few days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Erdenes Mongol and Gazprom speedily signed an agreement for the engineering and design work of the pipeline with the aim of starting construction in 2024.

During Putin’s recent visit to China for the Winter Olympic Games, a deal linking the Power of Siberia 1 with the Far Eastern Sakhalin-Vladivostok pipeline was signed, and parties further co-ordinated efforts on Soyuz-Vostok progress.

The Power of Siberia 2, and by extension the Soyuz-Vostok pipeline, has a capacity comparable to that of the suspended Nord Stream 2 projects of about 50bn cubic metres a year and is well-positioned to bring the Yamal peninsula’s production, which was originally destined for European markets, to China, thus completing the unification of Russia's gas transmission network.

Tough bargaining

In spite of having no expertise in developing natural gas pipelines, until now Ulaanbaatar has not engaged any third-party advisors in evaluating the technical and financial feasibility of the Soyuz-Vostok project. At the same time, Mongolia’s political leadership and Gazprom do not seem to be interested in involving a third party in the project, which could arguably increase transparency, provide additional capital and allow for greater scrutiny of the financial, engineering and environmental aspects.

As a result, Gazprom appears to have locked in Erdenes Mongol for a pre-determined set of technical and financial parameters, which will allow it to shift the unwarranted amount of total project cost onto the Soyuz-Vostok while leaving itself, or the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, the lion’s share of the net profits.

Without a proper evaluation of the project and third-party involvement, Mongolia is likely to take on a sizable loan from Russia, possibly on predatory terms, to finance its portion of the costs, while agreeing to pay it off from the gas transit fees. In this scenario, ironically similar to the Soviet-era development of the Erdenet copper mine, Mongolia would be bearing heavy, possibly unjustified cost burdens, but make just enough for the project to break even, while not being able to secure long-term benefits such as scalable discounted gas supplies. Accordingly, negotiating on the transit fees, gas prices and project funding in an information asymmetry will be detrimental to Ulaanbaatar’s interests.

Moreover, there is little reason to believe that Mongolia will be able to shield itself from the political and geo-technical risks of Soyuz-Vostok, where a suspension of gas transmission could delay cash-flows, devalue Ulaanbaatar’s investment and further indebt it. Political risks in this case do exist, not only from the Russian side, which continues to block Mongolia’s attempts to build indigenous hydropower generation capacity, but also from China, which has a habit of closing borders and applying diplomatic pressure on Mongolia every time the Dalai Lama visits at the invitation of Mongolian Buddhists.

With the energy exports to the Western countries set to decrease, Putin’s urge to accelerate infrastructure connections to Eastern markets gives China a bargaining chip for a discounted pipeline gas supply deal. This new geopolitical reality will put pressure on Gazprom to squeeze the most it can get out of the Soyuz-Vostok pipeline, and leave Mongolia at a disadvantage.

Under the current circumstances, the risks of agreeing to a deal with Gazprom entail increased dependency of Mongolia on both Russia and China without meaningful economic benefits while further exposing itself to political risks and potential pressure on sovereign domestic matters from its neighbours.

By Munkhnaran Bayarlkhagva in Ulaanbaatar April 24, 2022

The Chinese capital Beijing has kicked off mass testing for millions of residents after a spike in Covid cases.

The Chaoyang district reported 26 cases over the weekend - the highest number so far in Beijing's latest surge.

Long queues outside supermarkets and shops were seen despite government assurance of a sufficient food supply.

It comes amid fears that Beijing could face a similar situation to Shanghai, which has seen some 25 million people shut in their homes for weeks.

'All the meat was snatched up'

All 3.5 million residents in the city's largest Chaoyang district will undergo three rounds of mass testing, according to a notice by the city's disease prevention team.

The news prompted residents to rush to stock up essential supplies, with images circulating on local media showing supermarket shelves emptied of goods and snaking queues at check-out counters.

Beijing's major supermarkets also extended their opening hours to accommodate the spike in demand.

"Never thought I would go to the market early in the morning….when I got there, all the eggs and prawns were gone and all the meat was snatched up," said one Weibo user in Shanghai, before adding they managed to get some vegetables.

Another Weibo user in Shanghai said: "Seeing people in Beijing rush to buy food is both funny and distressing… its like looking at what my own life was like just last month."

State-media news outlet The Global Times said that Beijing's fresh food companies have been ordered to increase the supply of groceries like meat, poultry eggs and vegetables.

They also quoted health experts as saying that the results of the mass testing would indicate whether there is a need to escalate measures further, such as locking down several areas.

Separately, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told state-media outlet China Daily that the number of cases in Beijing is expected to increase in the following days.

The latest outbreak in Shanghai, first detected in late March, has seen more than 400,000 cases recorded so far and 138 deaths.

Some of the measures Chinese authorities have enforced include placing electronic door alarms to prevent those infected from leaving and forcibly evacuating people from their homes to carry out disinfection procedures.

Some in locked-down areas of Shanghai say they have been struggling to access food supplies, and forced to wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs.

Green barricades have also been erected overnight in parts of Shanghai without prior warning, effectively preventing residents from leaving their homes.

In contrast to many other countries, China is pursuing a zero-Covid strategy with the aim of eradicating the virus from the country completely.

While officials managed to keep infection levels relatively low at the beginning of the pandemic, later lockdowns have struggled to contain more recent, transmissible variants of the virus.