ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia – In Bayanzurkh District, 50 households are selected to receive the CHIP (cooking, heating, and insulation products) packages. The CHIP package essentially gives ger dwellers stable, clean heating and warmth throughout the winter months. The selected families will act as champions to promote the CHIP package to other households within their community.

Financed by UNICEF, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Manitoba Council for International Cooperation and the Government of Mongolia and implemented by People In Need INGO and the Mongolian University of Sciences and Technology, the CHIP package was developed by leading international and local scientists and experts that designed an affordable, yet effective, solution to take down chimneys and eliminate the use of coal in people’s Gers.

“The CHIP solutions are a comfortable and affordable alternative to coal-burning stoves. The heating is stable and easy to use, while also helping us to reduce both indoor and outdoor air pollution. I encourage households to explore CHIP as a viable option to heat their Gers this winter,” said Ulambayar, Deputy Governor of Bayanzurkh District in Ulaanbaatar.

The CHIP packages are now available in Bayanzurkh District and across Ulaanbaatar for purchase. Households that are interested can also access finance through the Government of Mongolia’s ‘Green Loan’ programme.

“The CHIP package isn’t only about keeping the ger warm, it’s also about reducing the exposure to air pollution, particularly in households with children and pregnant women. They are at highest risk of damage to their health, including pregnancy outcomes, brain and lung development,” said Sunder, Sustainable Energy Officer at UNICEF Mongolia.

In 2019, UNICEF piloted the CHIPS package in Bayankhongor city in partnership with the local government. Together, they set an ambitious goal to transform Bayankhongor city into the first Smog Free city in Mongolia by 2022. To date, 230 households in Bayakhongor received the CHIP package. So far, the response has been very positive. This year, Umnugobi and Gobi-Altai aimags, as well as communities in Ulaanbaatar, are starting to adopt Bayankhongor’ aimag’s good practice.

Mongolia is planning to operate at least 10 chartered flights in November to bring home more nationals stranded overseas due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's foreign ministry said Tuesday.

More than 1,900 Mongolian nationals are expected to return home on the planned flights, according to the ministry.

Following its suspension of international commercial flights, Mongolia has brought more than 26,100 nationals home on chartered flights, buses or trains from different places around the world.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The European Union (EU) Trade Day is running its second day under the theme “Increasing export capacity of Mongolia to the European market.” According to the statistics, export volume of non-mining products has gone up by 15 percent in the last three years. EU-financed Trade Related Assistance for Mongolia (TRAM) project, which aims to increase non-mining product export, is making its contribution in it.

Marketing manager of Mongolian Information and Trade Promotion Center of Europe (MITPC) in Berlin M.Zolzaya pointed out that the center was opened in November last year within the framework of TRAM project. It aims to provide support to Government policies aside from promoting business activities. Currently, 2650 pieces of products worth EUR 50,000 from 22 entities that produce leather, wool and cashmere products have been carried to Frankfurt on charter flight on October 23.

An expert of the TRAM project Carl Krug said “There are plenty of opportunities for Mongolian entities to enter into European market. Especially, I would like to highlight non-mining products. However, Mongolia’s export has inseparable connection with its mining industry. Even though it keeps export sum at high, it causes economic risks. Therefore, it is vital to diversify Mongolia’s export and conduct studies on numerous types of products to export to foreign market. Being less affected by the pandemic and having zero local transmission are advantageous for Mongolia. It is pleasant to see business and production is running normal in Mongolia. While negative impacts of the pandemic is high on global markets. Many businesses are closing in Japan, Korea and the United States due to the pandemic. Mongolian producers need to use this time when businesses are in stagnant condition because of the pandemic. It is important for them to improve quality of their products and ensure preparation of product development well to export to overseas countries. There are opportunities for Mongolian manufacturers to enter into global market with more quality products and with more speed when the pandemic subsides. Most countries of the world are focusing attention and making studies on it.

“GSP Hub” project is organizing a workshop today, providing information on facilitating horizontal collaboration among stakeholders, increasing the use of GSP+ preferences, through identifying routes for export diversification, encouraging European companies to increase their imports from Mongolia, and promoting international sustainability standards.

Over 200 delegates from business entities and private sector that created value-added chain of cluster are participating in the event.

Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group looks set to make the world's largest stock market debut.

Ant, backed by Jack Ma, billionaire founder of e-commerce platform Alibaba, is to sell shares worth about $34.4bn (£26.5bn) on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets.

Advisers to Ant set the share price on Monday amid reports of very strong demand from major investors.

The previous largest debut was Saudi Aramco's $29.4bn float last December.

Ant, an online payments business, is only selling about 11% of its shares. But the pricing values the whole business at about $313bn.

Mr Ma's Ant shares are reportedly worth about $17bn, taking his net worth to close to $80bn and confirming him as China's richest man.

Ant runs Alipay, the dominant online payment system in China, where cash, cheques and credit cards have long been eclipsed by e-payment devices and apps. As well as owning Alipay, which is estimated to have more than one billion users, Ant also offers wealth management, insurance and money transfer services.

The company is expected to make its dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong next week, underlining the latter exchange's growing importance as a financing hub.

Hong Kong will stay a key financial hub say experts

The Trump administration has threatened to limit Chinese firms' access to US capital markets, a move that is part of the long-running trade row between Washington and Beijing. In response, China called on its flagship tech giants to list on domestic stock markets.

Chinese tech firms, including NetEase and JD.Com, have already raised billions by selling their shares via the Hong Kong stock market.

According to the Bloomberg news agency, Mr Ma told a conference in China on Saturday that the flotation would be of huge significance for Shanghai and Hong Kong.

"This was the first time such a big listing, the largest in human history, was priced outside New York City," he told the Bund Summit.

"We wouldn't have dared to think about it five years, or even three years ago," said Mr Ma.

Major investors to have signed up to the share offering ahead of flotation, scheduled for 5 November, include Singapore state investor Temasek Holding and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds GIC and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Analysts said the flotation offered investors a chance to secure a slice of Asia's fast-growing tech sector.

"Digital commerce and infrastructure platforms in Asia provide an unprecedented opportunity for Asian and global investors to be part of the next wave of value creation in Asia," said Varun Mittal, an emerging markets expert at consultancy EY, in Singapore.

"Earlier this year, India saw a rush of international investors keen to invest in infrastructure and platforms ecosystem, which is being replicated in the Chinese ecosystem now."

China’s acceleration of its ‘new infrastructure’ plan will support the government’s beneficiation ambition in the metals industry, boosting production of high-end metals as opposed to primary metals, industry analyst Fitch Solutions finds in its latest report.

Despite this being a long-held strategy as part of the Chinese government’s shift away from export-oriented growth and the pivot towards domestic consumption, the focus on high-tech infrastructure has been more concerted in 2020 following a slowdown in economic activity arising from the covid-19 pandemic as well as heightened tensions between the US and China, the report reads.

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Fitch predicts this new infrastructure plan work in tandem with China’s other industrial policies such as Made in China 2025 and China Standards 2035 Plan – which together signal China’s ambitious long-term strategy of becoming the global leader in high-tech and innovative industries of the future.

New infrastructure projects including 5G networks, data centres and artificial intelligence systems, together with transport and energy infrastructure, namely ultra-high-voltage (UHV) technology, charging stations and high-speed rail, require a substantial amount of metals in their construction, especially lighter and more advanced metals, Fitch reports.

Fitch believes that Chinese domestic demand for high-end copper, aluminium and steel will face a strong boost from 2020 onwards, along with the government’s existing ambition to move up the metals production value chain and strengthen the market share of metal state-owned enterprises (SOEs) who have the technical know- how to produce these higher-end products as compared with smaller private players.

The technical expertise and financial abilities of large metal SOEs will ensure that they emerge as the biggest beneficiaries of this move up the value chain, Fitch asserts.

Fitch anticipates that new infrastructure projects in China would require close to 1mnt of high-end aluminium and 32mnt of specialty steel in 2020 alone, accounting for 3% of domestic demand for both metals.

This figure will rise in 2021 and 2022 as more projects are under construction. UHV power cables will be the key driver of demand for these metals, followed by urban mass transit and high-speed rail, and 5G network base stations.

According to the China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, a government think tank, specialty steel includes products with other metal content and a different proportion of carbon that requires additional smelting and processing and has higher physical performance than normal steel products such as rebar used in construction.

Fitch believes that Chinese metal SOEs will benefit significantly from the acceleration of the new infrastructure plan as these larger players with financial buffers have the technical know-how to produce higher-end metals (or the ability to engage in partnerships with foreign companies to acquire the technologies needed) and the economies of scale to profit from them.

Since 2018, the government has already focused on a metals replacement and consolidation strategy whereby outdated and inefficient production facilities have been replaced by cleaner ones producing more advanced higher-end metals. Fitch anticipates the renewed focus on moving up the value chain will further accelerate mergers and acquisitions in order to increase the market share of large metal SOEs.

Fitch believes that China’s 14th Five-Year Plan will include government desire to increase the market dominance of metal SOEs further following on from the 13th Five-Year Plan. This will especially impact the steel sector, where the share of total steel output produced by the top 10 producers is currently only 37% as of the end of 2019, up by 2% from 35% in 2015, according to the China Iron & Steel Association.

The International Copper Association (ICA) estimates that copper consumption in China will increase by 232kt annually up to 2025 due to the installation of higher-efficiency industrial motors and distribution transformers, the electrification of new railways, and new energy vehicles (NEVs) for industrial use.

Chinese metal SOEs will increasingly tap into demand from new infrastructure projects with their existing higher-end product portfolios or engage in partnerships with foreign companies to acquire the technical know- how of producing sustainable and advanced metals required in high-tech infrastructure, Fitch predicts.

China’s accelerated investment in new infrastructure and the ensuing higher-end metals production domestically will also be concomitant with investment in mining projects overseas along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in order to have enough ores for metals production, Fitch reports.

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. The FATF President Dr. Marcus Pleyer announced that Mongolia is no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process.

During its virtual plenary meeting on October 23, the FATF congratulated Iceland and Mongolia for the significant progress they have made in addressing the strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, identified earlier by the FATF and included in their respective action plans. The countries are now no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process. This comes after both countries received on-site visits despite the COVID-19 crisis. Mongolia will work with the APG of which it is a member, to continue to strengthen their AML/CFT regimes.

The meeting, chaired by the FATF President Dr. Marcus Pleyer, brought together delegates from over 130 countries and international organizations.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. A press briefing on COVID-19 situation in Mongolia was organized today, October 26, Monday. D.Nyamkhuu, Director of the National Center for Communicable Diseases reported that 11 new positive cases were detected in Mongolia in the past three days after 1,189 tests were carried out between October 23 and 25.

The 11 newly-detected COVID-19 cases are:

- 14-year old boy who arrived on a charter flight from Frankfurt, Germany on October 24

- Two Russian freight truck drivers, who entered Mongolia through Altanbulag border checkpoint in Selenge aimag on October 23 and 24.

- Eight people who arrived through the Altanbulag border checkpoint on October 22 were also tested positive for the coronavirus.

As a result, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Mongolia reached 339, all of them are ‘imported’ or detected from people who arrived from abroad and were placed under mandatory isolation.

The total recoveries of those cases are at 312, and currently 27 COVID-19 patients are being treated at the NCCD.

When Jeremy and Roxy Thiessen first served their home-finished beef to friends, their guests declared they’d never tasted anything like it. While this is often how stories of direct-marketing success begin, the Thiessens had a distinct advantage based on their location and market demands, providing a unique opportunity for this family.

At first glance, the arid grasslands surrounding Jeremy Thiessen’s feedlot may bring to mind the Palliser’s Triangle. This landscape, however, has fostered a tradition of herding livestock that dates back thousands of years. The steppes of northern Mongolia are home to Xanadu Razorback, Thiessen’s small feedlot, located at Hutag-Ondor in the province of Bulgan.

What is now a “steppe-to-plate” program began when Thiessen first finished and processed beef for his family’s use. “Most of the animals that are slaughtered here are three- to six-year-old steers,” Thiessen explains. “There was no other intensive feedlots in Mongolia, and in the grocery stores you couldn’t find T-bone steak or ribeye steak or any sort of different types of cuts. It was all just big chunks of meat.”

After trying this beef, produced using management practices similar to those used in Canada, their friends expressed interest in purchasing beef, and then asked if Thiessen would raise beef to carry in their store in Ulaanbaatar, which catered to expatriates. Thiessen focused on Mongolia’s expat community as his first target market based on their desire for recognizable cuts of beef.

“Some of the higher-end restaurants also were wanting to put steaks on the menu, so I started giving samples,” he says. This evolved to his current program, in which he finishes and processes the animals himself to get as much value as possible out of his investment.

“There wasn’t any intermediate company or system that was in place that I could actually market my animals that I had put more money into. In order to make any profit I had to go all the way.”

Thiessen’s background in the Canadian beef industry provided the foundation for his business. He was raised on his family’s ranch north of Fort St. John, B.C. In the 1960s, his father and uncle started their ranch with 20 head of polled Herefords after riding in to select their land and building five miles of road through dense forest. The ranch grew to 200 head of females, and as kids Thiessen and his siblings enjoyed showing their family’s registered Hereford bulls at exhibitions. His two eldest brothers purchased the operation and have since expanded their herds.

Thiessen’s own adventure began in the fall of 1993, when he travelled to Mongolia with a Christian aid organization. While adapting to life in Mongolia was something of a culture shock, he was eager for the challenge.

“I spent the first three years in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, learning the language and culture, and then also taking weekend trips and week trips out into the different parts of the country and exploring it,” he says.

He moved to Bulgan province in 1996 and worked in a community where he and others taught gardening skills. By working on commercial-scale projects to grow vegetables, this has provided a new livelihood for more than 50 families in the community since then.

“We were looking at starting another aid project. However, as we were assessing that, in my mind it was becoming more necessary for the people (to) be given jobs and skills rather than aid,” says Thiessen. “Looking at the agriculture industry in Mongolia, there was so many opportunities because of the lack of development in the industry, so that was what I wanted to target.”

The opportunity came when he found his way to Mongolia’s cattle business after a local producer offered to sell him some calves in 2004. He purchased three calves for around $11 per head, built a small corral and bought local wild grass hay and wheat bran for feed. As the calves started to grow and do well on feed, neighbouring herdsmen had their doubts about Thiessen’s methods.

“As the months went on and the calves kept gaining, their perception changed,” he recalls. “I was given a calf the next fall because they saw I knew what I was doing.”

Challenges to beef industry

When Thiessen established his feedlot in 2009, he was operating within a challenging system. Cattle production in Mongolia has retained much of its traditional nomadic character.

“The local herdsmen move two to three times annually, looking for free-range pasture for their herds,” Thiessen explains. “Most herdsmen will have a winter and summer camp, but they also move in spring and fall depending on the availability of the grass.”

In the 1950s, Hereford genetics were introduced from Russia, and herds were established on state-run farms in the provinces of Bulgan and Selenge. The breed did well in this environment, and breeding programs were well-managed by Soviet-trained livestock specialists. After the fall of the Soviet Union, though, state farms closed, livestock services deteriorated and Mongolia’s cattle industry seriously declined.

As for the traditional herding system, problems began to appear at this time when the Mongolian government actively encouraged producers to expand their herds, putting undue stress on the grasslands. The Mongolian steppes share many qualities with the Canadian Prairies, but the landscape has its own ecological challenges.

“It is a bit of a delicate landscape because of the aridness and the climate and the temperatures,” says Thiessen. “You can go from minus 40 in the wintertime to almost plus 40 in the summertime.”

Stocking rates and overgrazing have become critical issues in the steppes, challenging the future of the Mongolian beef industry. Loss of plant biodiversity and not enough pasture recovery time have put more pressure on the already low feed availability.

“There has to be some kind of management or this delicate landscape is going to be turned into a desert, and once that happens, if that happens, how do you bring it back? It’s very difficult.”

With a lack of supplemental feed in the winter, it’s estimated that native Mongolian cattle generally lose up to 30 per cent of their body weight each winter. With such conditions, it generally took several years to finish a steer. Intensive feeding programs were a foreign concept in Mongolia’s beef industry before Thiessen started his feedlot, and such programs are still an anomaly.

“Traditionally, Mongolian herdsmen will cut wild grass in meadows and valleys in September in minimal amounts because of it being labour-intensive,” he says. “It is cut with small tractors with a sickle bar, putting the hay into piles, then loading them onto trucks by hand, unloading them onto a bigger stack at their winter camps by hand. The amount of hay put up is insufficient and the quality is poor because it is cut after the grass is dried.”

In addition to the size of the market and availability of quality feed, several health challenges face the development of the Mongolian beef industry. Some areas continue to deal with brucellosis and foot-and-mouth disease in herds, and Thiessen treats all his cattle for warbles upon feedlot entry. As well, he notes the difficulty in sourcing good-quality calves due to age, health and body condition. Other issues hindering the country’s cattle business include outdated production technologies and very few processing facilities that meet export standards.

Opportunities for development

Despite these industry-wide challenges, Thiessen foresees Mongolian beef carving out its place in the market. New opportunities are emerging, with domestic markets demanding higher-quality beef and export markets growing in China and Russia.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for a niche market to sell all-natural, high-quality meat to some of the bigger markets around us,” he says.

He also envisions opportunities for the recovery of Mongolia’s grasslands, further supporting the industry’s development.

“If they were managed properly, and a short period of time of intensive feeding with good-quality feed, a unique, great-tasting beef is possible, which could be exported to niche markets in this region and farther.”

In developing his own operation, Thiessen currently sources two-year-olds from local producers for his 90-day feeding program and generally has around 150 head on feed at any time.

“I like the numbers to be closer to 200,” he says. “If I go too much more than that I end up feeding them for too many days, and my profitability starts to go down.”

With 10 employees at Xanadu Razorback, Thiessen and his team take the animals from feeding through the rest of the supply chain. This year, they aim to process 60 head per month. After slaughter, the beef is dry-aged and processed. Profit margins have been minimal due to the nature of a steppe-to-plate program, but Thiessen reports this is beginning to change. Xanadu Razorback supplies beef to several high-end restaurants, promoting the feeding program, animal health standards and management practices that contribute to great-tasting beef.

“One of my objectives in feeding cattle is to encourage quality to the livestock: bringing them off of the pasture earlier, putting them into a more intensive feeding program where they can gain weight, improving their health and quality of meat,” he explains.

While Thiessen sees further opportunities for the use of production technologies from Canada, he’s found it’s important to understand the culture and history of Mongolian herding traditions when introducing new methods.

“Sometimes expats come in with expectations that we’ll just copy-paste our system into this other context, and it doesn’t work — not all the time — the way it’s supposed to because of logistics, of culture,” he says. “There’s a host of things that people need to be considering if they go cross-culturally and get involved directly into people’s lives.”

Xanadu Razorback’s approach to finishing beef has attracted attention from the Mongolian government and businesses who want to help develop the country’s beef industry.

“In 2014 we had the parliament speaker of the house come visit our farm, and since then we’ve had multiple government officials come through. We’ve had multiple Mongolian businesses come and see our feedlot even though it’s really small, and just recently the minister of agriculture has recognized that this type of intensive feeding needs to be supported and developed in Mongolia,” he says.

“Even though it’s a small company and a small business right now, I’ve been able to have an impact not only in developing a business but also working to try and help the whole cattle industry develop here in Mongolia.”

Mongolia has joined the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) and is expected to implement tariff concessions with member countries staring next year, allowing both Chinese and Mongolian companies and people to enjoy more benefits.

According to a statement by China's Ministry of Commerce on Monday, Mongolia will reduce tariffs on 366 items, including seafood products, vegetables, fruits, animal and vegetable oil, minerals, chemical products, woods, cotton yarn, machinery and other items. The average tariff reduction level is 24.2 percent.

In return, Mongolia can enjoy relevant tariff reduction policies by other member countries under the APTA, including China.

"Mongolia's joining will further push forward the regional integration of developing economies in the Asia-Pacific region, promote the Belt and Road Initiative and enhance the level of bilateral trade liberalization and facilitation," the ministry said.

For years, China has become Mongolia's largest trade partner and the second largest source of investment.

Last year, China-Mongolia trade value grew 2.1 percent year-on-year to $8.16 billion. China's investment to Mongolia grew 132 percent year-on-year in 2019 to $270 million.

The APTA is the first regional preferential trade pact that China joined. Its member countries include Bangladesh, India, South Korea, Laos, Sri Lanka and Mongolia.

So far, the pact has implemented four rounds of tariff reductions. Six member countries have reduced tariffs on more than 10,000 items with the average reduction of 33 percent.

Mongolia shipped twice as much metallurgical coal to the Chinese market than Australia in September, confirming its position as the key supplier of the steelmaking raw material to China.

Mongolia sent 3.89 million tonnes of coking coal to China in September, while Australia shipped 1.98 million tonnes. In August, China imported 3.07 million tonnes of coking coal from Mongolia, and 3.02 million tonnes from Australia.

A buyer source from China said that imports from Mongolia will continue to be sizable in October, especially since imports from Australia were halted in early October.

China imported a total of 6.72 million tonnes of coking coal in September, down 15.6% from 7.96 million tonnes in the same month in 2019 and down by 6.3% month on month.

Coking coal imports in September were valued at 4.2 billion yuan ($631 million), down by 45.1% year on year and 20.2% lower month on month, according to customs data.

Fastmarkets’ index for premium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang averaged $130.26 per tonne in September, down by 20.1% from $163.09 per tonne a year earlier, but up by 12.9% from $115.37 per tonne last month.

In early October, steel mills in China received an official verbal notice to halt imports of Australian coal, which led to the slump in seaborne coking coal prices, especially for premium hard coking coal.

Fastmarkets’ index for premium hard coking coal, fob Australia stood at $113.25 per tonne on October 23, down $21.30 per tonne from $134.55 per tonne on October 1.