Rio Tinto Group shuttered its Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) unit on Wednesday and paused a $463 million expansion project amid escalating violence in surrounding communities that led to an employee being shot and injured. The stoppage will further sap investor sentiment in a country where business confidence is near the lowest level in two decades.

The freezing of the Zulti South project comes as President Cyril Ramaphosa battles to stimulate growth and retain the nation’s last investment-grade credit rating. South Africa’s economy contracted for a second quarter this year in the three months through September as farming, mining and factory output slumped.

The decision to halt operations was preceded by weeks of community protests in the area around the mine, causing “on-and-off disruptions,” said RBM Managing Director Werner Duvenhage. The demonstrations aren’t related to the company, but endanger employees’ lives and require government intervention, he said.

Losses will be “significant,” according to Duvenhage, who said he doesn’t know when RBM will resume operations.

Community disruptions around mines are leading to huge losses for producers, Anglo American Platinum Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Chris Griffith said in October. Many protests relate to the provision of municipal services and housing, while some communities also complain they get few benefits from mines, even as their lives are disrupted by relocations and pollution.

Crime wave
South Africa has also been plagued by xenophobic attacks and violence against women. While Ramaphosa has made combating crime a top priority since taking office, the number of murders climbed to the highest level in at least a decade in the 12 months through March.

Smelters at the site in the KwaZulu-Natal province are operating at a reduced level after an escalation of criminal activity directed at staff, London-based Rio said Wednesday in a statement.

Rio shares were little changed in London trading.

Output for 2019 is expected to be at the low end of a guidance range of 1.2 million to 1.4 million tons and Rio is contacting customers to minimize disruptions. RBM employs about 5,000 staff and contractors, and exports titanium dioxide slag, used to create ingredients for products including paint, plastics, sunscreen and toothpaste.

“We have taken decisive action to stop operations to reduce the risk of serious harm to our team members,” Bold Baatar, Rio’s CEO for energy & minerals, said in the statement.

(By Felix Njini and David Stringer)

According to Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, financial adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan, foreign direct investment surged 200 percent in the first half of 2019. Stocks have also risen, with the main Karachi stock index up by 13 percent over the past month, making it the best-performing stock exchange of the 94 tracked by Bloomberg.

“A double-digit yield on a cheap currency is a good value trade in itself,” Charles Robertson from Renaissance Capital told Deutsche Welle. “I would recommend investors keep buying Pakistan while it offers double-digit interest rates,” he said.

Robertson added that even central bank rate cuts of a few percent would still make Pakistan interesting. “The current policy choices of Pakistan offer the country the best chance of getting onto a sustainable growth path. Borrowing costs are lower thanks to foreign investors buying government debt.”

Central bank data showed that of 1-year papers bought in November, 55 percent were from the UK and 44 percent from the US.

Habib Bank CEO Muhammad Aurangzeb said that Pakistan plans to issue $1 billion worth of ‘Panda bonds’ in the first quarter of 2020 in the Chinese market for the first time in yuan. A Panda bond is a Chinese renminbi-denominated bond from a non-Chinese issuer, sold in China.

This week, Moody’s upgraded Pakistan’s credit outlook from negative to stable, saying the financial situation is on a path of improvement. It also expressed hope that the help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will mitigate the risks to its economy. Last month, Islamabad secured another tranche from the IMF as part of a $450-million loan package.

The experts at Moody’s said the country’s economic recovery reduces “external vulnerability risks,” but warned that “foreign exchange reserve buffers remain low and will take time to rebuild.”

In the framework of the national programme ‘e-Governance’, and the agency’s objective to establish ‘Online Immigration’, the Mongolia Immigration Agency is making step-by-step changes to make state services easy, quick and accessible for citizens. More specifically, the service to issue the type J (tourist), B (business), A (official), S (student), and single and multiple-entry business visas have been made available online from May this year.

To access the online service, directly visit https://evisa.mn and create an account to send an electronic visa application. Since putting the online service into operation, the agency has settled applications for visa types J, B, A, S1, S2, as well as multiple-entry visas of over 5,000 citizens.

Gazprom said that the first small-scale delivery of LNG to Mongolia was carried out by Gazprom Export on November 4, 2019.

The delivery was discussed during a working meeting in Moscow between the chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee Alexey Miller and the Prime Minister of Mongolia Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Apart from the first-ever delivery of LNG to Mongolia, the parties discussed the prospects of energy cooperation.

As for the delivery, the first batch of Russian LNG will be used as a vehicle fuel in municipal transport in Mongolia’s capital city Ulan-Bator. According to Gazprom, the batch weighed 36 tons.

The Mongolian government started implementing a mortgage loan program in 2013 to increase the affordability and accessibility of apartments for urban residents, particularly young families and those living in ger districts.

"Providing housing mortgages at a rate of 8 percent is also part of the government's efforts to reduce air pollution in the country, especially in the capital city of Ulan Bator," Zorig Munkh-Orgil, first deputy CEO of the MIC, said at a workshop on air pollution and housing.

"A total of 95,000 borrowers have benefited from the housing program. Over 90 percent of them are residents of Ulan Bator," she said.

Air pollution is a pressing challenge for Ulan Bator, where over 800,000 residents, half of its population, live in the city's ger districts, with no running water, central heating or sewerage systems.

Ger residents use stoves and burn raw coal and other flammable materials to cook and keep warm during the region's six-month-long winter, a practice believed to be responsible for an estimated 80 percent of the air pollution in the capital city.

The Mongolian government has been striving to improve air quality in Ulan Bator by taking various measures, including banning the burning of low-grade coal for domestic use.

Housing is said to be one of the long-term solutions for reducing air pollution.

At the discussion, Estonia’s experience of completely digitizing its government services was shared. As a result of the country’s digital transformation over the past 17 years, corruption and bureaucracy in the delivery of its government services vanished.

In his address, President of Mongolia Kh.Battulga noted that Mongolia was placed 62nd in the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking calculated on the basis of 51 ranking criteria.

Even though foundation for digital services has been laid we are failing to use information technology. For instance, only 24 thousand of the total 400 thousand drivers used the newly digitized vehicle tax payment system and this requires additional legal regulations. However, the role of private sector, universities, research institutes, and international organizations is crucial to achieving complete digitalization as only government organizations’ efforts for this would be futile, the President noted.

There are some 10 countries in the world that combined government and private sector services in digitalization. From their experience, the most suitable one for Mongolia is that of Estonia’s, said Head of the Cabinet Secretariat L.Oyun-Erdene. “Thus, we intend to establish a memorandum of cooperation with the country’s government to launch a five-year program to digitize Mongolia. After five years, we will be at the same level with Estonia. Specifically, around 90 percent of the government services will be rid of bureaucracy and provided 150 times faster then,” he added.

To establish new company, for example, now it takes 1-2 days for permissions, however it would take 3-5 minutes through mobile phone when public service is digitized.

The Head of the Cabinet Secretariat also emphasized that digital transformation of government services will put an end to corruption and bureaucracy as no government official will be able to take advantage of their power with that.

The forum is co-organized by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Association of Small-sized Enterprises of Japan from the Japanese side, and Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry of Mongolia and Small Medium Enterprises Development Fund of the Ministry, National Development Agency, Export International Center NGO from the Mongolia side.

Mongolian delegation of business enterprises will be introducing their business projects to their Japanese counterparts and an implementation of Free Trade Agreement established between Mongolia and Japan is on the agenda for discussion at the forum. In addition, Mongolian business companies will meet with representatives of Japanese small enterprises during the forum to exchange experiences and get information to enter into Japanese market.

Government organizations, academic and research organizations, companies engaged in cashmere, leather production, health and food industries of Mongolia are planning to send their delegates to the forum in Tokyo.

In a press release, Steppe said that it has mined, crushed and stacked approximately 300,000 tonnes of ore at a grade of 2.13g/t gold on the leach pad.

Based on these early results and the fact that the mining, crushing and stacking program is ongoing, the company expects next year’s production to reach approximately 60,000 ounces of the yellow metal.

Given that the mine’s initial phase is completed, Steppe’s management now wants to move ahead with a feasibility study into what it calls the “Stage 2 Expansion Project.” The aim of such expansion is to increase annual gold production to 150,000 ounces per annum from underlying fresh rock ores.

The 5,492-hectare Altan Tsagaan Ovoo gold and silver operation is located in the territory of Tsagaan Ovoo soum, in the Dornod province of eastern Mongolia.

A 2017 technical report on the project proposed a development plan for an open-pit, heap leach operation that, once at full capacity, should be able to produce 146,699 ounces of gold and 672,518 ounces silver per year.