So far, the World Health Organisation has approved three COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. Mongolia approved itself those vaccines on 10 January, 2021. The country of 3.3 billion has joined in Covax programme with support from UNICEF to obtain the vaccines.

Therefore, the government is planning to vaccinate 60 percent of its population – or over 2 million people above age 18 – from the beginning of March.

Firstly, health workers, people with chronic diseases and senior citizens will get 300 thousand jabs in cooperation between the Mongolian Government and the governments of China, Russia and India.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Yesterday, February 10, the Cabinet convened and approved a plan worth of MNT 10 trillion to protect citizens’ health and recover the economy. Following the Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene presented the plan to the public.

The new Cabinet has developed the plan within two weeks after its formation and it was projected to be implemented in partnership with the Parliament and the Bank of Mongolia.

“Core of the Government policy will target to create jobs, not for social welfare. The best welfare is a guaranteed job with high salary. Therefore, most part of the plan will aim to create more jobs,” the PM highlighted in the beginning of the briefing.

As of today, Mongolia’s economy shrank by 6 percent and GDP went down by 12 percent. Due to the situation, remaining securities of the central bank has reached MNT 7.9 trillion. In other words, commercial banks have deposited all their money as a form of risk fund, not issuing loans. As a result, cash flow has become stagnant leading to shortage of jobs and no economic turnover. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 68.9 thousand jobs have been lost in Mongolia. According to the study made by scholars, 130 thousand jobs will be lost in 2021 unless we implement the complex plan, the PM emphasized.

The Government is aiming to provide its population with housing accommodations and the housing program worth of MNT 3 trillion was included in the plan. MNT 1 trillion will be spent on giving land free of charge, building apartments under a unified blueprint, giving discounts on some building materials such as cement and iron armature and the Government will be responsible for credit guarantee and infrastructure.

The Government will also offer soft loan to construction companies. In other words, the Government will cooperate with construction companies on free land and free infrastructure, the PM emphasized.

The PM said “MNT 2 trillion will be spent on mortgage loan funding. It is most difficult for building companies to sell their apartments. Construction companies that are able to accept requirements by the Government and reduce their apartment price per square meter will be involved in mortgage loan. Financing of MNT 100 billion will be granted to mortgage loan monthly. As a result, construction sector will be activated, creating jobs and increasing opportunity for youth to live in apartment. ”

WASHINGTON, February 11, 2021 – The World Bank Board of Executive Directors today approved additional financing in the amount of $50.7 million for the Mongolia COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Project to enable affordable and equitable access to vaccines in the country.

The funding has been approved at a crucial juncture in the government’s response to COVID-19. Mongolia has taken strong measures to prevent and contain the COVID-19 outbreak since the beginning of 2020. Despite the relatively low number of cases in Mongolia, further community spread risks remain high. To reduce this risk, further preventive measures, supporting health system improvements, and providing access to COVID-19 vaccines are critical.

To support the Mongolian government’s strategy to vaccinate at least 60 percent of its population, the additional financing will help pay for purchase and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. Given the urgent need to expand immunization capacity, it will support comprehensive measures for effective vaccine delivery, such as cold chain upgrade, logistics, national and local roll-out plans, public information campaigns, and staff training.

“Access to safe and effective vaccines will be critical to protecting lives and accelerating economic and social recovery in Mongolia,” said Andrei Mikhnev, World Bank Country Manager for Mongolia. “This additional financing approved today will enable affordable and equitable access to vaccines and play a critical role in further strengthening the health system in Mongolia.”

The World Bank is part of multilateral efforts such as ACT-A and COVAX and is cooperating closely with WHO and UNICEF who continue to play an integral role in supporting vaccine deployment and building capacity of health care workers.

The Mongolia COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Project, approved in April 2020, is helping strengthen health system preparedness and diagnostic capacity through procurement of essential medical equipment and personal protective equipment for three tertiary hospitals as well as hospitals of 21 provinces and 9 districts of Ulaanbaatar city.

World Bank Group Response to COVID-19

The World Bank, one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, is taking broad, fast action to help developing countries respond to the health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19. This includes $12 billion to help low- and middle-income countries purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, and strengthen vaccination systems. The financing builds on the broader World Bank Group COVID-19 response, which is helping more than 100 countries strengthen health systems, support the poorest households, and create supportive conditions to maintain livelihoods and jobs for those hit hardest.

China says it has successfully put its Tianwen-1 mission in orbit around Mars.

It's the first time the country has managed to get a spacecraft to the Red Planet and comes a day after the United Arab Emirates accomplished the same feat.

Engineers will bide their time before despatching the wheeled robot to the surface but the expectation is that this will happen in May or June.

Wednesday's orbit insertion underlines again the rapid progress China's space programme is making.

It follows December's impressive mission to retrieve rock and soil samples from Earth's Moon - by any measure a very complex undertaking.

Its five-tonne spacecraft stack, made up of orbiter and rover, was launched from Wenchang spaceport in July, and travelled nearly half a billion km to rendezvous with the Red Planet.

Engineers had planned a 14-minute braking burn on the orbiter's 3,000-newton thruster, with the expectation that this would reduce its 23km/s velocity sufficiently to allow capture by Mars' gravity.

The manoeuvre was automated; it had to be. Radio commands currently take 11 minutes to traverse the 190 million km now separating Earth from Mars.

It should have put Tianwen-1 in an initial large ellipse that comes in as close as 400km from the surface and out as far as 180,000km.

This will be trimmed over time to become tighter and more circularised.

In contrast to the Emiratis' live TV coverage on Tuesday, China chose to report the orbit insertion at Mars only after it had occurred.

It was clear early on, however, that events were proceeding as they should because amateur radio enthusiasts could listen across Tianwen-1's signals, and they could see each milestone in the manoeuvre was being achieved.

China is following the strategy employed by the Americans for their successful Viking landers in the mid-1970s. The idea then was to make orbit first and only later send a robot to the surface.

A period of reconnaissance will now follow but Tianwen-1's primary choice for a touchdown is a flat plain within the Utopia impact basin just north of Mars' equator.

The rover, which has yet to be named, looks a lot like the US space agency's (Nasa) Spirit and Opportunity rovers from the 2000s. It weighs some 240kg and is powered by fold-out solar panels.

A tall mast carries cameras to take pictures and aid navigation; five additional instruments will help assess the mineralogy of local rocks and look for any water-ice.

A key experiment will be the ground-penetrating radar, which should be able to sense geological layers at tens metres' depth.

This surface investigation is really only half the mission, however, because the orbiter that has been shepherding the rover will also study the planet, using a suite of seven remote-sensing instruments.

Like previous satellites, this spacecraft will observe characteristics of the high atmosphere and examine the structures and composition of the surface. High- and medium-resolution cameras should return some impressive pictures.

Tinawen-1 is one of three missions arriving at Mars this February.

The UAE's Hope probe made it safely into orbit on Tuesday. Next week, Nasa will attempt to put another of its big rovers on the surface.

Hit by the COVID-19 crisis, Mongolia’s economy has experienced the worst contraction since its economic transition in early 1990s, but it is projected to rebound in 2021. Following a 7.3 percent decline in the first nine months of 2020, the World Bank’s latest Mongolia Economic Update estimates that the economy will grow by 4.3 percent in 2021 – as government stimulus measures prop up domestic demand, shockwaves to the global economy recede, and vaccines are introduced.

The COVID-19 shock to Mongolia’s economy has been severe and widespread, affecting the structure and conditions of the labor market, says the report. While employment increased in IT and health sectors, job declines occurred in various other sectors including hospitality and entertainment. The report cautions of the increased risk of low-skilled workers in the informal sectors and those living just above the national poverty line falling into poverty.

“Economic recovery from the COVID-19 shocks is likely to be slow and erratic. Mongolia’s policy focus needs to transition from short-term relief to accelerating recovery and building resilience,” said Andrei Mikhnev, World Bank Country Manager for Mongolia. “The immediate challenge is the limited fiscal space to continue the generous support provided in 2020, while an abrupt withdrawal could create significant difficulties for households and firms”.

The report notes that the government’s relief measures were successful in providing adequate support to households and firms and prevented a wave of business closures. The report estimates the size of the government’s fiscal support at around 9 percent of GDP in 2020.[1] The 2021 budget foresees a return to fiscal consolidation, which will be required to prevent a further increase in the country’s large public sector debt.

The report projects real GDP growth in 2021-22 to accelerate to about 5 percent, supported by a renewed drive of investment in the mining sector. Private finance backed by foreign direct investment (FDI) will remain a key contributor to growth, especially in mining, manufacturing, and transport services. Private consumption will also support growth in the medium-term.

However, the latest domestic outbreak has added considerable uncertainty to the economic recovery, according to the report. Other risks to the outlook include further coronavirus outbreaks, extreme weather, fragility in the financial sector as regulatory forbearance is withdrawn, and the possibility of new spending and overstretched public finance in the run-up to the presidential elections.

The report cautions that even in the face of persistent uncertainty Mongolia needs to signal a clear commitment to fiscal stability to avoid a recurrence of the traditional macro boom-and-bust cycles. Further exchange rate flexibility could help cushion additional external shocks and thereby preserve the limited policy room.

Beyond these short-term risks, the rollout of vaccines could help bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control and allow policy efforts to begin focusing on the critical medium-term agenda. An immediate priority are further efforts to implement structural reforms in the banking sector, says the report. Key elements of these reforms include strengthening capital buffers and improving corporate governance of banks (including ongoing reforms in ownership structure of banks), facilitated by the gradual exit from extraordinary regulatory forbearance.

The report says that the approval of the banking law is a good first step which should be followed by further measures to strengthen the independence of bank supervision and deal with the legacy of non-performing loans in the sector.

The report recommends that Mongolia adopt an integrated and fiscally sustainable approach to boosting medium-term economic prospects and job creation. This includes leveraging private sector investment in the mining and non-mining sectors to create higher productivity jobs and sustainable income opportunities for Mongolians. These efforts should be complemented by better targeted government investments in infrastructure and a more efficient and affordable social safety net.

World Bank Group

To minimize COVID-19 transmission during the upcoming Tsagaan Sar holiday, the Mongolian government has announced that a state of “all-out-preparedness” and associated lockdown measures will be reimposed in Ulaanbaatar beginning at 0600 on February 11 and continuing until at least 0600 on February 23.

U.S. citizens should expect the reimposition of anti-COVID-19 measures adopted during previous lockdowns, including the suspension of non-essential businesses, movement restrictions (both vehicular and pedestrian), ongoing contact tracing, etc., although enforcement of these measures is expected to be more stringent than during similar previous periods. The public is once again urged to stay home and leave only to buy groceries, medicines, and other necessities. Grocery stores and pharmacies are expected to remain open, and one adult from each household will be permitted to visit these locations during pre-approved hours. Schools remain closed and public gatherings prohibited.

In addition, the government has announced its intention to conduct COVID-19 testing of one individual per household throughout Ulaanbaatar. Registered foreigners are not exempt from this requirement, and U.S. citizens should anticipate testing requests from local health authorities. The current proposal includes the potential of fines up to 500,000 MNT for those found in violation of the stay-at-home order and 100,000 MNT for refusing mandatory COVID-19 testing.

City residents working in non-essential industries will be prohibited from traveling via car, with QR codes required of authorized drivers. Public transportation will also be limited to those traveling for work in pre-approved sectors and will be limited to the hours of 0700 – 1000 and 1700 – 2000. (Limited exceptions will continue to apply for health emergencies, funeral services, and the purchase of utilities/heating supplies.)

U.S. citizens in Ulaanbaatar are encouraged to maintain adequate emergency provisions (food, water, medications, etc.) in the event the lockdown is extended or they are required to quarantine in place. U.S. citizens can also review previous Embassy announcements containing guidance on the measures adopted by the Mongolian government related to the community transmission of COVID-19 by visiting: https://mn.usembassy.gov/.../security-and-travel.../.

Update on Consular Services

The Consular Section at the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar will once again suspend all consular services effective February 11. Services will resume as soon as they are deemed safe for visa applicants and U.S. citizens. If you are a U.S. citizen in need of emergency assistance, please contact +976 7007-6001.

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - February 10, 2021) - ION Energy Limited (TSXV: ION) (OTCQB: IONGF) (FSE: 5YB) ("ION" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Urgakh Naran Lithium Brine Project (the "Urgakh Naran Project") located in Mongolia's Dorngovi Province. The name "Urgakh Naran" is Mongolian for "Rising Sun" and the Project covers an area of approximately over 19,000 hectares of highly prospective lithium terrain located 150km WNW of the Company's flagship property, the Baavhai Uul Lithium Brine Project. The acquisition of the Urgakh Naran Project brings the total land area held by ION that is prospective for lithium salars to over 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres).

The Company acquired the Urgakh Naran Project as a result of its successful tender bid submitted to the Mineral Resource Authority of Mongolia. The total cost of acquiring the Urgakh Naran Project was approximately USD$310,000 for consulting, administrative and transfer tax costs.

"The acquisition of this project represents the further execution of our Company's objectives to secure terrains highly prospective for the discovery of lithium salars. Ion Energy is a leader in Mongolia's lithium exploration and development. It also solidifies Ion Energy's long-term commitment to support our world's green revolution by playing a key role in the supply chain. The Urgakh Naran Project is situated in the arid and infrastructure rich region of the South Gobi Desert," commented ION's CEO, Ali Haji. Work has already commenced to develop the exploration program on this highly prospective project. The Company will also be releasing results from its recently completed Geophysics program on the Baavhai Uul Lithium Brine Project.

Summary:

Time: 9am UK and 17.00 Ulaanbaatar time .

Date: 11th Feb

Text to use (feel free to tweak):

The Department for International Trade and The Foreign Commonwealth Development office will host a webinar on the UK's Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP). Under this scheme, importers pay lower (often zero) tariffs on goods from seventy developing countries.

This webinar is targeted to businesses in Asian countries that are interested in exporting to the UK (see a list below of the eligible countries). This webinar will cover:

- UK's GSP Overview

- Evidence required to import goods under GSP

- The Enhanced Framework: application and monitoring processes.

- Improvements and future of the UK's GSP

- Q&A

Link: https://eu.eventscloud.com/ehome/trade-events-calendar/all-events?keyword=Generalised

In recent years, one battle in the fight against poor or corrupt natural resource governance has been the efforts to end anonymous corporate ownership.

Undisclosed ownership interests enable profound corruption in a variety of sectors, particularly in the extractive industries, where the magnitude of money involved attracts a number of insidious schemes. Consider the scenario where members of a legislature hold secret ownership stakes in mining companies, while at the same time drafting legislation governing that sector: They may prioritize self-interest over the well-being of the public—all without the public’s knowledge or ability to hold them to account.

To mitigate corruption risks, as well as a variety of other issues facilitated by secret corporate ownership, countries around the world have developed beneficial ownership (BO) registries—online databases that publish the names of company shareholders, owners, or beneficiaries.

At heart, the disclosure of BO pursues two objectives. First, it limits the ability of companies to use financial schemes or complex ownership structures to evade and avoid taxes, launder money, or finance illegal activities. Second, it inhibits a variety of corrupt interactions between private enterprise and public actors. For example, in a system with full transparency, a regulator would not be able to accept a bribe from a firm in exchange for a positive decision.

BO registries face a host of challenges. In Mongolia, where mining contributes around 23% of the country’s GDP, BO transparency (BOT) has made some progress, but profound issues remain.

Mongolia has been crafting its BO disclosure systems for the better part of this decade. In 2013, the Mongolia chapter of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) took a first step when it requested voluntary disclosure of BO information from extractive companies. In 2016, the EITI Standard was expanded to require public disclosure of extractive company BO data. As a member of the EITI since 2006, Mongolia voluntarily committed to this provision, and the country devised a roadmap for meeting the criteria by the beginning of this year. However, it failed to meet the deadline.

OUR APPROACH

In late November 2020, the Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption (LTRC) initiative, with the Open Society Forum, the Natural Resource Governance Institute, and Transparency International Mongolia, hosted a virtual roundtable on BO with stakeholders in Mongolia from civil society, government (regulatory bodies and Parliament), and international organizations. The event marked the beginning of LTRC’s work in Mongolia to strengthen the ongoing BOT process.

This work will be consistent with the LTRC TAP-Plus framework, which posits that bundled transparency, accountability, and participation (TAP) interventions can move the needle on corruption in natural resource governance when their design properly considers context and existing implementation gaps. LTRC aims to contribute to an ecosystem that makes BO disclosure more robust and leads to effective accountability.

For simplicity, we divided the discussion around BOT in four stages, as shown on the figure below: the legislative framework that governs it, the supply of data for the BO registry, and the demand for and use of the data that can be leveraged to foster accountability and oversight. We encouraged participants to discuss how to address challenges, including:

Gaps in legislation and its enforcement

Limitations to the usability and usefulness of the registry and existing data

Lack of incentives and political economy constraints around the actual use of BO information

Constraints to achieve effective accountability

4 stages of beneficial ownership transparency

Below, we outline key challenges and potential solutions that emerged from both the roundtable and LTRC’s research.

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Mongolia’s BO legal and regulatory system offers at least three major areas for improvement. First, the system is vague and inconsistent, with legal disclosure requirements varying across statutes and ministries. Second, the threshold ownership levels that trigger a disclosure requirement are higher than international standards and potentially allow large numbers of owners to evade scrutiny. Third, the data that the government collects is inaccessible to the public.

At least seven different laws have a bearing on BO disclosure in Mongolia, from the Law on State Registration of Legal Entities to the Law on Minerals to the Law on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. Unfortunately, the disclosure requirements are not harmonized across the laws and in some cases are overly vague, making them difficult to follow even for well-meaning companies.

The first step for a foreign or domestic enterprise operating in Mongolia is straightforward. It must register with the General Authority for State Registration. In a major improvement, as of January 2021, companies must disclose to the agency all ultimate beneficial owners that hold a 33% or more asset stake. Once registration is complete, companies are required to register with the General Tax Authority and then with a variety of other ministries, as appropriate. Unfortunately, the rules and requirements behind those later interactions do not always correspond with the general registry process. As a result, various regulators are unable to tie their records or efforts to another ministry’s records or data. The tangle of discordant rules and data is frustrating to companies that are trying to follow the rules. Worse, they also present opportunities for bad faith actors to manipulate the system or to just fall through the cracks.

Meanwhile, with Mongolia’s disclosure requirement not triggered unless someone holds a 33% stake in a company, beneficial owners with lower shares go undetected. The global norm of a 25% threshold is already high. Indeed, many stakeholders around the world argue that owners of as low as 5% of a company should be disclosed.

Nonetheless, many participants in the roundtable were encouraged by recent developments regarding these two issues. The fact that Mongolia had taken a major step forward in its top-level state registration requirement was seen as a major opening. The combination of the looming January 2021 deadline to disclose 33%-and-up BOs and Mongolia’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list over money laundering concerns could create new momentum for coordination and harmonization across ministries. In addition, some attendees also believed that the 33% trigger will likely be lowered as various ministries’ information technology capacities expand.

Nevertheless, one remaining implementation gap should be addressed: As a matter of law, making registry information available to the public is not currently possible. The Law on the State Registration of Legal Entities contains a clause listing the company information to be made publicly available; BO is not included on that list. As a result, the State Registration Office officially announced that they cannot make registered BO information public, since the law does not mandate such disclosure.

While undoubtedly complex, these legal issues are by no means insurmountable. Beyond the EITI, Mongolia has committed to other voluntary international standards that require or encourage BOT, including the OECD/G20’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting framework and the multilateral Open Government Partnership; these further serve as incentives for the country to enshrine BOT into domestic legislation.

Now, the Mongolian Parliament is considering a law on mining sector transparency (sometimes known as the “EITI law”) that would, among other provisions, mandate public disclosure of extractive industries’ BO information. In the short term, champions in Parliament and civil society, along with international organizations, can advocate for the passage of this law. Then, advocates for BO disclosure must work to ensure that it is effectively implemented.

SUPPLY OF DATA

Although there is an official state-run BO registry in Mongolia, it leaves room for improvement. Because the law limits the release of sensitive BO information to the public, the BOT system mainly serves state bodies (such as the tax office) and is not designed for citizen use. Participants discussed how limited public access to official BO data severely inhibits accountability efforts. Even painstaking efforts to gather information across siloed registries are often insufficient because the data are partial, out of date, or inaccurate.

Meanwhile, the state’s data collection process suffers from technical and capacity challenges. BO information is collected on paper, and then entered into the database manually. This introduces the risk of clerical errors and, crucially, imposes personnel capacity constraints on information collection and processing. There are efforts to streamline registration forms and move the collection process online, but progress is slow and information technology infrastructure challenges persist.

Even when data is disclosed and released, a lack of prior data is a concern. The Mongolian state registry publishes current data, but once information is updated, all prior data is discarded. But the extractive industries have long lifecycles, during which there may be frequent changes in contracts and ownership. As a result, the lack of longitudinal data limits the ability to identify and understand BO trends over time.

Without access to verified, complete, and timely information, civil society organizations are constrained in types of monitoring and accountability activities they can conduct. These challenges highlight the need for coordination and collaboration between different actors. Participants suggested that their analysis would improve with enhanced mechanisms for linking and sharing information found in the private sector (especially mining companies and banks) with public registries, as well as with data sharing among government agencies. Participants also suggested the integration of different government databases.

Reforming the existing registries and forming information sharing partnerships will take time. In the near term, several participants advocated for the creation of a civil society BO registration mechanism. Instead of waiting for changes to be made to the state registration, civil society organizations may consider leveraging nontraditional sources to create a nonstate platform for BO disclosures.

DEMAND AND ACCOUNTABILITY

On the demand side, participants underscored that little is known about the general public’s understanding of transparency tools and mechanisms, including BOT. Without a clear picture of the public’s sense of the value of BO disclosures—and any barriers to advancing awareness and understanding of this topic—it is difficult for journalists and civil society organizations to gauge how to most effectively communicate BO information to the public.

Even among individuals who recognize the value of BO and seek to monitor disclosures, a lack of technical capacity inhibits the ability of end-users to access and understand the data, thus impeding the ability of stakeholders to use the data in pursuit of oversight and accountability.

In addition, those that do have the technical data review capacity may still be stymied in their efforts if the data is incomplete or inaccessible (e.g., not in a user-friendly format). This underscores the importance of coordination and collaboration among relevant stakeholders to ensure that data is accurate, complete, and timely.

Participants suggested a number of action items to enhance uptake and use of accurate, timely data. For example, initiatives (e.g., surveys) to establish a baseline understanding of the public’s awareness of BO could inform their efforts to more effectively communicate information about BO. In addition, training opportunities for civil society organizations and media could improve their ability to access and analyze data. However, participants noted that one-off training opportunities are valuable, but not sufficient; instead, ongoing mentorship supported by grants or other funding opportunities will be vital to ensure the impact of these efforts is sustainable. Further, efforts to support journalists and civil society organizations must be sensitive to the context of restricted media freedom in Mongolia. Several participants also noted the importance of establishing rigorous processes for verifying that data is accurate and ensuring compliance with disclosure processes.

LOOKING AHEAD

In the coming months, LTRC will continue to work with local partners to develop a strategy for overcoming implementation gaps and building an effective BO ecosystem in Mongolia. We welcome thoughts, feedback, and ideas for continued engagement at ltrc@brookings.edu.

Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia reported 54 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the nationwide tally to 2,174, the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases (NCCD) said Wednesday.

"A total of 25,275 tests for COVID-19 were conducted at 12 laboratories across Mongolia yesterday and 54 of them were positive," the NCCD said in a statement.

The latest confirmed cases were locally transmitted or detected in the country's capital Ulan Bator, according to the center.

The Asian country has so far recorded four COVID-19-related deaths and 1,585 recoveries. Enditem