President attends AmCham monthly meeting www.zgm.mn

The President of Mongolia Battulga Khaltmaa delivered the keynote speech for the August monthly meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Mongolia. The President stated that parliamentary elections can pose unstable political conditions, which negatively affect entrepreneurs and investors.

MSE holds open event to demonstrate capital market knowledge www.zgm.mn

In order to improve capital market knowledge of rural citizens, Mongolian Stock Exchange (MSE) JSC organized ‘Capital Markets Open Day’ event in Arkhangai and Khuvsgul provinces on August 19-24, 2019 in cooperation with Mongolian Central Securities Depository, Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC and Goodsec LLC.

Total revenue of top companies raises www.zgm.mn

The total net profit of the top 12 largest companies which lead the top 20 Index by trading volume and activity reached MNT 52 billion. For example, LendMN NBFI JSC’s net profit doubled and totaled MNT 2.5 billion. As of August, 80 of 200 MSE-listed companies have announced their financial results for the first half of 2019.

Mid-term assessment on ‘Whole Liver-Mongolia’ national program ongoing www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The mid-term assessment of the national program, ‘Whole Liver-Mongolia’, is jointly being done by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. In the framework of the assessment, corresponding officials of the ministry, WHO and the National Center for Noncommunicable Diseases worked at the National Blood Center, and did assessments on three issues: ‘Safety of blood and blood products, storage, infection control, sterilization and disinfection, and waste’, ‘Laboratory operations’, and ‘Immunization, prevention after infection, donor training and promotion’.

Facial recognition specialist Megvii plans share sale www.bbc.com

A leading Chinese facial recognition provider has filed papers for a listing on Hong Kong's stock exchange.

Megvii - the maker of the Face++ system - is one of the country's best known artificial intelligence (AI) companies.

Earlier this year, a Western study suggested its face-checking tech was more accurate than rival systems from Amazon and IBM.

But it comes at a time when campaigners are voicing concerns about facial recognition's use for surveillance.

There have also been reports that the White House has considered adding Megvii to a trade blacklist that would prevent it making use of US-origin software and components.

Face maps
Face++ has been used in consumer-focused hardware, including:

smartphones made by Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo
laptops made by Lenovo
Didi Chuxing's ride-hailing app to let passengers check the driver's identity
"smile-to-pay" terminals tested within KFC restaurants by Alibaba
the Chinese dating website Jiayuan, which offered a way to automatically find faces a user was likely to be attracted to based on their preferences
But it says that most of its current revenue comes from "smart city" applications, which include facial recognition and other "security management" tasks at workplaces, educational institutions and major events.

It has also been reported that the Beijing-based firm's tech has been used to help make thousands of arrests in China, and has been pitched to police departments in other countries.

The technology works by first detecting human faces in an image.

Then it creates a pattern determined by where a person's eyes, lips, chin and up to 1,000 other key features are located.

It can then check whether the pattern matches that of a device's owner, or cross-reference it against a wider database containing facial maps for an "unlimited" number of people provided by the client in order to identify a subject or flag if they appear similar to someone on a watch list.

In addition to being able to carry out face searches, the firm says its technology can also be used to detect emotions, provide beauty scores, track eye-gaze and body gestures, and evaluate the health status of a person's skin.

Most recently the company announced a tie-up with an Austrian firm, Ams, to start offering 3D-depth sensing facial recognition.

In addition, it has released Hetu - an operating system for warehouse robots - which it says is already being used by Alibaba's Tmall subsidiary.

The firm has said that part of the proceeds of the stock sale would be used to fund further research.

It booked a 3.35bn yuan ($468m; £383m) loss in its last financial year, and a further 5.2bn yuan loss for the first six months of this year.

But its area of expertise makes it a flag-bearer for the Chinese government's ambition to overtake the US and become the leading AI innovator by 2030.

It was valued as being worth about $4bn in May.

Toppled lamppost
Megvii has not publicly disclosed how much it intends to raise, but the Reuters news agency reported that the flotation was aimed at raising between $500m to $1bn (£410m to £820m).

The firm's Chinese-language prospectus does, however, spell out a long list of possible risk factors including:

further US-China tariffs or even an all-out "trade war"
the possibility of the US imposing "severe restrictions" on its business partners, in a similar manner to those already faced by Huawei
the "uncertainty of the Chinese legal system", which can make it difficult to be sure of being in compliance with the country's rules
Furthermore it adds that it could be damaged by "rumours" about the abuse of its AI technology.

This has been interpreted by some to reference the fact that earlier this year, Human Rights Watch claimed to have evidence that Face++ was being used as part of efforts to repress Uighur Muslims in China. The campaign rights group subsequently retracted the allegation and issued a correction.

Megvii also faces the fact that facial recognition is becoming an increasingly controversial subject.

In Hong Kong itself, protesters have demanded the removal of so-called smart lampposts over fears they could be used to carry out facial ID checks. Last weekend, footage was shared on social media of one such structure being cut down with an electric saw.

The Financial Times has reported that the EU plans new regulations to restrict use of facial recognition and make sure citizens are notified when it has been deployed, despite the fact the topic was already addressed in the recently-introduced General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

And in the US, three cities have banned federal agencies from using the tech, while politicians in the Senate and Congress are considering new laws to curtail its use by government and commercial bodies.

African footballers stranded around the world with crushed dreams www.aljazeera.com

BoM to issue mortgage loan until 2020 www.zgm.mn

The Bank of Mongolia (BoM) has been continuing to dispense mortgage funding for two years, considering the social significance of the mortgage lending program. The program will be implemented jointly with the government until 2020. According to this agreement, the BoM shall finance the fund from its bonds guaranteed by its credit until 2019.

Celebrating the Khalkhin Gol Victory – programme www.news.mn

The official programme for celebrating the 80th anniversary of Victory of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol has been announced:

The Trumps’ Mongolian adventure www.news.mn

The eldest child of President Donald Trump left Mongolia on 25 August after travelling with his son for a week. In Mongolia, Donald Trump Jr challenged himself to climb Khuiten, the highest peak of the Tavan Bogd Mountain which is located near the triple border of Mongolia, China and Russia. In addition, he spent time with his son in Mongolia fishing, hunting and riding horses. He posted his travel photos on Instagram with warm farewell words.

Construction of railway from Tavantolgoi deposits and Gashuusukhait port to resume www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Last July, the Government of Mongolia made a decision to resume the construction work of the railway Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait, which has been stopped due to issues concerning railway gauge, connection point and funding. The government will finance the construction, which is planned to complete by December 2020. During a presentation meeting “”Development and investment of Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait railway” held on August 25, officials gave an update on the railway construction.

The construction of the 240 km long railroad with 2 stations and 5 passing loops will restart next month to continue for 28 months. During this period, a railroad with a load capacity of 25 tons, 16 bridges, 126 tunnels and 8 wildlife crossings will be built. It is deemed that the railway will transport annually around 30 tons of thermal and coking coal for exports, which further result in a two-to threefold growth of mining exploitation of the Tavantolgoi deposit, a decrease of coal transportation cost within the territory of Mongolia by USD 8 per ton and creating some 1900 jobs. Furthermore, the government will receive dividends amounting to USD 1 billion within the period of 25 years.

As of today, Tavantolgoi coal is sold at USD 70 per ton at the mine. Thanks to the railroad, the coal would be delivered to the country’s border and traded at a higher price of USD 120-150 per ton. Freight train travel time between Tavantolgoi station to Gashuunsukhait border crossing will be around 4 hours. What’s more, if the coal is transported to the China’s ports of Huanghua and Tianjin on the assumption that agreements are made with corresponding Chinese railway companies, the price per ton would go up to USD 200-250.

In 2013-2015, around 51 percent of the lower structure of the road, 86.6 percent of the planned earthworks and 52 percent of tunnels and bridges were completed, totaling about USD 280 million, The total cost of the railway construction is USD 1.07 billion and some USD 790-830 million is required to complete the construction project.

Now, Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC and Mongolian Railway state-owned company each own 66 and 34 percent of the Tavantolgoi Railway LLC, a company that was responsible for the construction, respectively to fund the construction. For that reason, the Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC established a subsidiary company and working to open IPO with a view to raise capital of more than USD 1.2 billion.

According to CEO of Erdenes TavanTolgoi JSC B.Gankhuyag, the company is carrying out three large-scale projects, as the Government of Mongolia, in 2018, assigned Erdenes TavanTolgoi JSC to raise capital from international stock market and finance the constructions. The first project of Tavantolgoi-Zuunbayan railway construction is currently ongoing with the help of military and professional organizations. The second project is the Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait, which holds significant economic value. As the current transportation cost of a ton of coal is around USD 32, the railway will provide chances to decrease the cost down to USD 8. The third project is an auto road Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait. The single-track road presently transports around 17 million tons of coal a year. Building another paralel road is an effort to ensure safety of drivers. Within the framework of the projects by the Erdenes-Tavantolgoi JSC, more than ten companies were newly founded, such as coke plant, power plant, IPO company and railway company, creating more than six thousand job places at the company and and 21 thousand outside the company.

Speaking of the which, the Erdenes-Tavantolgoi JSC has extracted 8.4 million tons of coal and sold them for exports in the first quarter of 2019. To date, the company’s sales volume reached MNT 1 billion and net income was recorded at MNT 677 billion, exceeding its initial plan by 20-50 percent.