The country’s cabinet partially repealed a resolution that called for immediate action for ETT’s overseas offering, while an international share sale plan remains the goal for the long term, according to a statement posted on the government’s website on Monday. The authority urged ETT to turn its focus to a long-delayed railway project to link its Tavan Tolgoi coal mine with China.

The Mongolian coal miner was working with an adviser for preparations of a planned Hong Kong IPO that could raise more than $1 billion, Bloomberg News reported in October. The company was targeting a listing in the Asian financial hub as soon as this year, people familiar with the matter have said.

The delay comes as first-time share sales have slowed globally on weak market sentiment. Companies have raised about $2.3 billion in Hong Kong through IPOs so far this year, a 43% drop from the same period in 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Chinese biotech firm Akeso Inc. raised $333 million in the city’s biggest listing in 2020.

Tavan Tolgoi, which means “five hills,” refers to the original location of the coal ore, according to its website. Tavan Tolgoi coal mine, located in the Gobi desert, is the largest coal ore deposit in Mongolia. Its deposit is estimated at a total of over 6 billion metric tons of coal, more than one-third of which is high-grade hard coking coal, the website said.

A share sale would have marked at least a third effort to raise money to develop the Tavan Tolgoi mine after international partnerships failed in 2011 and 2015. Mongolian lawmakers in 2018 approved a plan to sell up to 30% of Tavan Tolgoi mine.

by Terrence Edwards

In Mongolia, the Bank has been working closely with the government to address the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the health sector, Mongolia was included in the WBG’s first batch of COVID-19 health emergency support operations. The Mongolia COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness project, with a total financing of US$26.9 million, will help the country meet emergency needs in the face of the pandemic and better prepare for future health crises.
In addition, US$2.2 million has been mobilized under the ongoing E-Health project to purchase the most needed medical diagnostic equipment.
Under the Strengthening Governance in Mongolia Project, funded by the European Union, US$750,000 (€ 680,000) has been reprioritized to enable the government to take more targeted just-in-time measures to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, such as assessing the potential economic impact of the pandemic, planning and monitoring of fiscal resources, and better tracking the allocation and expenditure on response measures.
The World Bank is planning to support the economic stimulus package approved by the Parliament on April 9, 2020 and is also looking for other ways to help mitigate the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 crisis in Mongolia and the East Asia Pacific region. The East Asia and Pacific Regional Economic Update (April 2020) analyzes the economic impact of COVID-19 on the region and recommends policy actions countries can take to mitigate the impact, with a particular focus on protecting the poor and vulnerable.

As of April 20, 2020, Mongolia exported goods worth USD 1.3 billion. The figure represents the fall of 39.3 percent as compared with the same period of the previous year.

The export includes 3.6 million tons of coal, 2.5 million tons of iron ore, 382.9 thousand tons of copper concentrate, 176.1 thousand tons of spar, 46.7 thousand tons of zinc ore and concentrate and 395.4 thousand tons of crude oil.

The novel coronavirus is believed to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan and first emerged in December before spreading quickly worldwide. Some 2.83 million people have been reported to be infected globally and 197,872 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

“The latest news is that by April 26, the number of new coronavirus patients in Wuhan was at zero, thanks to the joint efforts of Wuhan and medical staff from around the country,” National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said at a briefing.

The city had reported 46,452 cases, 56% of the national total. It saw 3,869 fatalities, or 84% of China’s total.

Wuhan and the province of Hubei were put in lockdown near the end of January, with roads sealed, trains and planes cancelled and residents unable to move freely for more than two months. The city is still testing residents regularly despite relaxing the restrictions.

The focus has since shifted to the northeast border province of Heilongjiang, which has seen large numbers of imported coronavirus cases entering from Russia.

China’s health authority had earlier reported 11 new coronavirus cases on the mainland on April 25, down from 12 the previous day, with no fatalities.

To see an interactive graphic tracking the global spread of coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Kim Coghill

All tests of the French citizen were negative, he recovered and was transferred to a private resort.

As of April 27, Mongolia has confirmed a total of 38 COVID-19 cases and 9 of them recovered.

The rest are under treatment at the National Center for Communicable Disease.

The COVID-19 infection was first reported in Mongolia on March 10. The case was imported, a French citizen who arrived in Ulaanbaatar on March 2 transiting through Moscow tested positive.

In a letter to workers, seen by news outlets, Guillaume Faury is said to have warned the company was "bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed".

This month the firm announced it was cutting aircraft production by a third.

It comes as the aviation industry is expected to shrink significantly in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Mr Faury also told Airbus' 135,000 staff to brace for potentially deep job cuts and warned that its survival was at stake without immediate action, according to the Reuters news agency.

Airbus is this week due to deliver financial results for the first quarter of the year. Those figures will be overshadowed by the pandemic that has left global airlines struggling to survive and almost completely halted plane deliveries since lockdowns started in March.

Greg Waldron, from the aviation industry news website Flight Global, highlighted the huge impact of coronavirus on Airbus and the sector as a whole, saying: "Every assumption we had about the industry has been totally upended."

"The outlook for Airbus has gone from very positive to very negative. There's simply no demand for new aircraft at the moment."

In response to the pandemic Airbus had already begun implementing government-assisted furlough schemes starting with 3,000 workers in France and said it would lower output of its narrow-body jets to 40 a month.

Airbus has around 13,500 workers in the UK, with most of them making wings at its two major sites in Broughton, north Wales, and Filton, Bristol.

Despite the major blow the coronavirus has dealt to Airbus, Mr Waldron thinks it will survive this crisis but not without significant layoffs.

"Airbus is a crucially important industrial programme for Europe, I think Europe will be committed to keeping Airbus going," he said.

"However, there's going to be a great deal of pain to go through. If they cut production rates quite significantly you're going to see large numbers of layoffs. I would expect in a few years years you'll see a smaller leaner Airbus than what we have now."

Airbus did not immediately reply to a request for comment from the BBC.

“Mongolia is among the most heavily coal-dependent developing member countries of ADB, and its energy sector is the largest contributor to its greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about two-thirds of the total,” said Director General of ADB’s East Asia Department James Lynch. “The project will lead to the decarbonisation of the energy system in the country with increased penetration of renewable energy.”

In 2018, coal-fired combined heat and power plants contributed to 93 percent of total power generation in the electricity grid. Mongolia’s rich renewable energy potential—such as wind and solar—is estimated to be equivalent to 2,600 gigawatts, which could fully meet the country’s future power demand. However, this rich potential has not been realised. The government aims to increase the share of renewable energy in total installed capacity from about 12 percent in 2018 to 20 percent by 2023 and 30 percent by 2030, in line with the State Policy on Energy, 2015–2030.

The project will install 125 megawatts of advanced BESS, making it among the largest battery storage systems globally. The BESS will be resilient to Mongolia’s extremely cold climate and equipped with a battery energy management system enabling it to be charged entirely by renewable electricity. This will then discharge clean electricity to supply peaking power in the central energy system grid. The project will also provide a regulation reserve to integrate additional renewable energy capacity in the transmission grid.

The country’s renewable energy capacity will be increased through the project, supplying 44 gigawatt-hours of clean peaking power annually on completion. The project will support the integration of an additional 859 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity into the energy system grid, avoiding 842,039 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually by 2025. The project will also help strengthen the capacity of the National Dispatching Center to handle power dispatch and grid operations and of the National Power Transmission Grid to operate and maintain the BESS.

The total cost of the project is USD 114.95 million, of which USD 3 million is co-financed by a grant from ADB’s High-Level Technology Fund, financed by the Government of Japan. The government of Mongolia will provide USD 11.95 million toward the cost of the project, which is due for completion in September 2024.

Russia and Saudi Arabia supplied almost equal amounts of oil to the country last month, with shipments standing at 7.02 million tonnes (1.66 million bpd) and 7.21 million tonnes (1.7 million bpd) respectively. However, the data released by the General Administration of Customs shows that purchases from Riyadh fell 1.6 percent, while Russian crude imports rose 31 percent, according to Reuters calculations.

The increased imports come as the Chinese economy is slowly getting back to normal, with most enterprises resuming operations after weeks-long quarantine. China became the first country to be hit by the deadly virus at the end of last year. Since then the outbreak shifted from Asia to Europe and the US, which has become the new epicenter of the epidemic. As of Sunday, over 939,000 people were infected in the US, while 53,934 were killed by the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

China doubles rate of crude stockpiling as oil falls below $0
The pandemic has sapped global demand for crude which might fall by around 30 percent, according to some gruesome estimates. As both onshore and offshore storage facilities have been running out of space, oil prices tumbled to record lows earlier this week, with WTI futures for May delivery entering negative territory. Prices for the international benchmark Brent also fell to multi-year lows.

In a bid to help the market rebound, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as well as allied producers led by Russia, agreed on historic output cuts earlier this month. Starting in May, the signatories will have to slash production by 9.7 million barrels per day. However, many fear that the cuts came too late and will be not enough to ramp up the prices as demand will not rebound any time soon.