Fresh air and social distancing: Mongolia reopens resorts www.news.mn

Under the instruction of Mongolian Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh, resorts both inside and beyond Ulaanbaatar reopened today (15 April). Quarantined since mid-February, residents in Ulaanbaatar are eager to go out in the fresh air at the weekend. The rationale of reopening the resorts is to prevent people gathering, especially in areas such as the Bogd Mountain and along the banks of the Tuul River at the weekends.

Face masks may be 'new normal' as U.S. prepares gradual reopening www.reuters.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States approached 31,000 on Wednesday as governors began cautiously preparing Americans for a post-virus life that would likely include public face coverings as the “new normal.”

The governors of Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania each issued orders or recommendations that residents wear face masks as they emerge from isolation in the coming weeks.

“If you are going to be in public and you cannot maintain social distancing, then have a mask, and put that mask on,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.

Similar orders were imposed in New Jersey and Los Angeles last week and face coverings were recommended by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly on Tuesday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has said residents across the nation’s most-populous state would likely be wearing masks in public for some time to come.

“We are going to be getting back to normal; it will be a new normal,” Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said, echoing a phrase used by at least two of his fellow governors in recent days.

U.S. Midwest governors were also making plans together to restart their economies, said Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

In Michigan, hundreds of cars flooded the streets around the state Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday to protest Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders, some of the strictest in the country.

Some protesters, in the demonstration organized by conservative and pro-President Donald Trump groups, left their cars to gather on the lawn in front of the Capitol building, many of them not wearing masks or practicing social distancing.

TOLL ON HEALTHCARE STAFF
As of Wednesday night, 30,885 people in the United States had died of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a Reuters tally.

That total includes more than 4,000 deaths newly attributed to the disease in New York City after health officials revised their counting methods to include “probable,” but unconfirmed, cases.

Healthcare workers have faced unique health threats while working on the front lines trying to tackle the pandemic. Reuters has identified more than 50 nurses, doctors and medical technicians who have died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 or showing symptoms of it. At least 16 were in New York state.

“The emergency room is like a war zone,” said Raj Aya, whose wife, Madhvi Aya - a physician’s assistant in Brooklyn - was one of the healthcare workers who died in New York.

As the outbreak begins to slow, political leaders have bickered over how and when to begin the process of unwinding unprecedented lockdowns that have badly damaged the economy and largely confined Americans to their homes.

Washington state Governor Jay Inslee told an afternoon news conference the largest obstacle to a return to normalcy was a shortage of coronavirus tests.

“We simply haven’t had enough test kits – they simply do not exist anywhere in the United States right now,” Inslee said, adding that the state had purchased about a million swabs, along with vials and test medium but they were just starting to arrive.

Trump, citing data suggesting that the peak of new infections had passed, said he would announce guidelines on Thursday for reopening the economy.

The sweeping closures of businesses have left millions of Americans unemployed and store owners struggling to pay rent.

Government data released on Wednesday showed that retail sales dropped by 8.7% in March, the biggest decline since tracking began in 1992. Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

In addition, output at U.S. factories declined by the most since 1946 as the pandemic fractured supply chains.

“The economy is almost in free fall,” said Sung Won Sohn, a business economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The United States, with the world’s third-largest population, has now suffered the greatest number of reported fatalities from the coronavirus, ahead of Italy and Spain.

The pathogen emerged last year in China.

Trump said on Wednesday his government was trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing “needs to come clean” on what they know. The official death toll released by the Chinese government stands at about 3,600.

The source of the virus remains a mystery. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicated that the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there was no certainty either way.

World Bank Group plans $12m loan to Mongolia microfinance company www.asia.nikkei.com

HANOI -- The World Bank's private sector arm, International Finance Corporation, may extend a syndicated senior loan facility equal to $12 million in local currency to Mongolian microfinance company Transcapital.

Time deposits in foreign currency increased by 27.2 percent www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. At the end of March 2020, the time deposit in domestic currency amounted to MNT 10.7 trillion, decreased by MNT 371.3 billion (3.4%) from the previous month, and by MNT 465.4 billion (4.2%) compared with the same period of the previous year.

Individual loans make up 50.4 percent of total outstanding loans www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. At the end of March 2020, the total amount of outstanding loan to entities, enterprises and citizens amounted to MNT 17.1 trillion, decreased by MNT 200.9 billion (1.2%) from the previous month and by MNT 315.4 billion (1.8%) from the same period of the previous year. In the total outstanding loans, MNT 8.6 trillion (50.4%) was individual loans.

The number of traded securities decreased by 90.8 percent in March www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. In the first three months of 2020, securities worth of MNT 9.6 billion were traded at the national stock market, showing a decrease of MNT 58.0 billion (85.8%) compared to the same period of the previous year.

New UB administration offices to open in Yarmag www.news.mn

The Ulaanbaatar municipal organisation offices are to move to the New Yarmag Centre in the Khan-Uul District of the capital. Consisting of three blocks, the new office complex will cover 58262 square meters; the total allocated area is to be 5.0 hectares. Construction is nearly complete.

Copper price rally builds after China imports surprise www.mining.com

Copper jumped on Tuesday after a rebound in Chinese imports of the metal indicated the country’s manufacturing sector may be emerging faster than initially thought from the covid-19 slump.

Impacts of COVID-19 are currently low, but uncertainty in Artisanal Gold Mining Communities remains high www.artisanalgold.org

Since Mongolia transitioned away from central planning in 1990, mining has come to play a dominant role in the economy. In 2016, the mineral sector accounted for 20.6% of Mongolia’s GDP, 80% of its exports, 30% of the national budget revenue, and more than 70% of the country’s foreign direct investment. Gold is the single largest mineral by value produced in Mongolia. In 2019, the Central Bank of Mongolia bought 15.2 tonnes of gold of which 48% or 7.4 tonnes were supplied by individuals including artisanal and small-scale miners[1].

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) operations are present in as many as fourteen of the country’s twenty-one provinces. Artisanal miners are estimated to number somewhere between 40,000 to 60,000 people, or 12%-20% of Mongolia’s rural labor force. A third of these miners are women.

Following the news of the outbreak of COVID-19 in neighbouring China, Mongolian authorities took immediate and rapid measures to prevent the virus from entering the country. The Mongolian government closed all border crossings and suspended universities, public institutions, and public events for nearly six weeks, starting very early in the last week of January 2020 and continuing until March 2, 2020. This has since been extended to April 30, 2020. On April 14, authorities announced that schools would remain closed until September 1, 2020.

Authorities credit these restrictions with keeping the number of COVID-19 infections in Mongolia quite low, though those numbers are now rising. With a population of around 3.2 million, Mongolia had as of April 14, 2020 reported 30 cases of COVID-19, an increase of 13 cases from the day before. Most of these cases were actually Mongolian citizens repatriated from abroad who had travelled through Russia on their way home. To date, there have been no deaths.

Had the virus not been kept out so effectively it might have hit artisanal mining communities particularly hard, as is evident in other countries (see Burkina Faso and the Philippines). Closing artisanal mining can be devastating because many artisanal miners in Mongolia earn income solely from their day-to-day labor and need to sell the gold they recover for sustenance. This leaves miners highly vulnerable to any shut down or interruptions in the gold supply chain. To date, thankfully, the impacts of COVID-19 remain minimal.

The gold supply chain is weakened but not broken

According to miners and gold traders, local gold prices in Mongolia have not yet been strongly affected. Mongolia has tightened its isolation measures twice – once for 10 days during the Lunar New Year celebrations, and a second time for a few days after March 10, when the first case of COVID-19 was reported. During these days, miners were prohibited from travelling to their mine sites but at all other times, mining has continued as normal. During February and March, aside from a minor increase in the prices of meat and rice in some areas, the supply and prices of food and common goods have also not altered drastically.

While no dramatic impact from COVID-19 has yet been observed, the closure of all educational institutions at all levels does risk harming women miners’ productivity. Women miners carry the double burden of taking care of their children and families as well as earning an income. With schools closed, female miners are faced with the choice of foregoing income to stay home and care for their children, or bringing their children with them to an active mine site with its risks.

A miner’s story

“During the first lockdown, we were quarantined in Tunkhel village, and a few miners who were working at the Bulag ASM site were also stranded as the area became inaccessible,” said B. Myagmarsuren, a miner in Selenge province. Myagmarsuren has been selling gold to a processing plant in Bornuur Soum in Tuv province for about ten years at a competitive price. As recently as April 8, this processing plant was buying gold at 130,000 MNT (about US$46.67) per gram, or about 88% or world price. As world gold prices have increased, the price offerred by this processing plant has actually increased to 140,000 MNT (US$ 50.31) or about 90.5% of world price.

Myagmarsuren added that if other preventive measures are announced, such as an extended in-country travel ban or lockdown, then “we would have to cease activities or work in a very limited scope, making us very vulnerable,” she said.

Miners believe that interrupting their ability to extract ore and sell gold would freeze the local economy. Gas stations and grocery stores are mainly dependent on the local gold market. For many communities, the artisanal gold sector is one of their most important sources of income.

Formalization of Mongolia’s artisanal gold mining sector an added challenge

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Mongolia remains a largely informal sector. The Artisanal Gold Council has been working since 2019 in partnership with the government authorities through its GEF-funded planetGOLD project towards providing improved conditions for formalization.

Hoping the current situation surrounding COVID-19 does not get worse, one miner said: “Cancelling the formalization process is another fear we have … it would drive artisanal miners into the black market and consider operating in illegal ways to extract gold.”

Should conditions surrounding the artisanal gold sector in Mongolia worsen due to COVID-19, formalized miners may be less vulnerable than the informal ones because they would have a higher chance of receiving government assistance. In an odd way, the current health crisis could also be an opportunity. Governments looking to mitigate the crisis might come through with loans or assistance programs for formalized miners and thereby create a lasting incentive with clear benefits for the informal parts of the sector to move forward with their own formalization efforts. Many mining communities continue to dream of a scenario in which the artisanal gold mining sector is regarded just like any other small to medium enterprise in the country and the COVID-19 crisis makes a good example of why it is important to realize that dream.

The AGC in Mongolia and planetGOLD

The AGC has been working on artisanal mining issues in Mongolia for several years is a proud participant in the country’s planetGOLD programme. PlanetGOLD is an innovative programme that aims to improve the lives of artisanal and small-scale gold miners by focusing on four core areas: technical solutions, access to finance, formalization, and knowledge creation/awareness raising.

SEC: MNT 150,000 fine for not wearing face masks www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. At today’s press briefing by the State Emergency Commission (SEC), Colonel B.Uuganbayar, Deputy Chief of the National Emergency Management said that “Let’s wear face masks” public campaign is running across the nation to promote the use of protective face masks in prevention of the spread of the COVID-19 and residents could be considered to intentionally harm other people's health if caught not wearing face masks in public places and fined MNT 150,000 for under the Law on Infringement.