The 450 MW power plant was planned to be built on the site of Thermal Power Plant III (TPP3) through a concession agreement.

The plant's energy production capacity would be taken to 830 MW in two phases. There were 24 companies that made bids for the project, including JDF Seuz from France, Sojizt from Japan, Posko Energy from South Korea, and Newcom.

TPP5 was expected to eliminate the need for upgrades at TPP3 and TPP4, but with the cancellation of the TPP5 project the TPP3 and TPP4 upgrades will be carried out.

The company “Erel” renovated its old plant, BUK-1, with the up-to-date German technology and machinery in 2014, becoming one of the world standard factories. BUK-1 started its operation last December.

Renovations of the factory created a possibility to construct all types of buildings using the factory’s products.

Since the factory produces final products, it saves additional costs on mastic, foam and mud adhesives and sealants that are prepared by hands during construction process. By doing so, it will create a possibility to sell an apartment at around MNT1-1.2 million per square meter.

After seeing operations of the factory, the President said “Problems such as air pollution, poverty and unemployment will be resolved by means of providing citizens with apartments. A launching of this automated factory is an important step. Today, air pollution in Ulaanbaatar city reaches disastrous level. We will get rid of smog if housing measures are taken in a short period of time. The factory’s activity will be supported further.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the government passed a resolution to buy the 49 percent holding, giving Mongolia full state control of the Erdenet mine, following a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court in December against the nationalisation decided by parliament in February 2017.

MCC said no agreement had been reached with the government and it would fight the decision legally.

“We will protect our legal ownership rights locally and internationally,” MCC’s Chairman Munkhbaatar Myagmar told Reuters on Tuesday in London. He was is in the city for talks with law firm Omnia Strategy, which is representing the company.

The signal Mongolia’s government was giving to potential foreign investors, which can help it meet the terms of an IMF bailout agreed last year, was negative, he said.

“If this kind of thing happens again, no-one will come to Mongolia,” he said.

Erdenet is one of the region’s largest copper mines, producing 530,000 tonnes of copper concentrate annually.

Mongolia’s proximity to neighbouring China, the world’s biggest copper consumer, has attracted interest from Chilean state-owned company Codelco, the biggest copper-producing company.

Major miner Rio Tinto is already present in Mongolia, where it is working on a massive underground extension at copper mine Oyu Tolgoi.

Oyu Tolgoi is jointly owned by the government of Mongolia (34 percent) and Turquoise Hill Resources (66 percent), which in turn is 51 percent-owned by mine operator Rio Tinto.

MCC purchased the Erdenet mine from Russia in 2016, with the approval of then prime minister Chimed Saikhanbileg.

The parliament later nationalised the mine, saying it had never endorsed the sale.

MCC says its purchase was legal and the government’s dismissal of the Supreme Court’s decision, which upheld an earlier court ruling, was unconstitutional.

It also argues the company will be run more efficiently under private management and says it is a big tax payer to the Mongolian government, paying around $100 million in tax in the first half of last year.

No-one from the Mongolian government was immediately available to comment on Tuesday.

In a statement last week before Tuesday’s government resolution formalised the repurchase, it said MCC would be compensated by the just over $400 million it said the company paid to Russia to acquire the stake. (Editing by David Evans)

The European giant aims to produce six of its A320 jets each month by 2020 at its final assembly plant near Beijing.

During his three-day visit, Mr Macron said both France and China must open up to doing business with each other.

At present, he said, France has "access to markets which is unbalanced [and] unsatisfying".

He told an audience of French and Chinese business leaders: "If we don't deal with this responsibly, the first natural reaction will be to close up on both sides."

As part of the agreement, Airbus said it will "enhance its industrial partnership in Tianjin" which is one of four global facilities that assemble the A320 family of planes, whose wings are made in the UK.

Airbus said it hopes to "strengthen the cooperation with regards to technical innovation, engineering capabilities and supply chain expansion".

Airbus currently produces four aircraft a month at the facility but said this will rise to five by 2019 before reaching a monthly turnout of six jets by early 2020.

The company is one of a number of businesses travelling with Mr Macron on his first state visit since being elected last May.

He has called on Europe to take a more coordinated approach to trade with China.

Mr Macron said that in the past, countries had come to China with different agendas and varying degrees of openness.

"We need a coordinated European approach... that gives China more visibility about our agenda," Mr Macron said.

"That's why France is in favour of defining strategic sectors where we want to protect investments... It's a question of sovereignty as you yourselves have understood very well."

Current Keidanren chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara is stepping down when his second 2-year term ends in May.
He says he wants Nakanishi to take over.

Sakakibara said he wants his successor to be an executive from the manufacturing sector who will promote technological innovation and has global experience.

Nakanishi was considered the favorite for the position because of how he turned Hitachi around. The company had posted losses for several years.

The gas being shipped is from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant, according to the newspaper. The tanker is due to arrive in the US on January 22.

As the newspaper reports, the deal was signed because of rising gas prices – to an unprecedented $6,300 per a thousand cubic meters – on the east coast of the US. Extreme weather conditions, in particular a snow storm, led to the price hike.

US sanctions against the Russian energy sector do not directly ban supplies of LNG to America from Moscow. However, Washington has repeatedly stressed it wants to oust Russia as Europe’s key gas supplier and has imposed sanctions that hinder the financing of Gazprom’s projects with Brussels.

The tanker was loaded in the British port just after Russian tanker Christophe de Margerie arrived in the UK in December with the first batch of Russian LNG.

In December, Russia opened an LNG plant in the country’s northern region of Yamal. The ice-breaking tanker was named after the former CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, who died in a plane crash in Russia. The tanker can carry up to 173,000 cubic meters of LNG. Russia plans to build 15 tankers of that size.

Costing $27 billion, the plant will have three production lines and a total capacity of 16.5 million tons of LNG per year. Almost 96 percent of the Yamal LNG plant’s production has already been contracted.

The project is a joint venture between Russia’s NOVATEK (50.1 percent), Total (20 percent), CNPC (20 percent), and the Silk Road Fund (9.9 percent).

According to figures released by the Ulaanbaatar office of the South Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), trade between the two countries jumped 43 percent year-on-year to nearly two-point-three million dollars in 2017.

Mongolia's exports to the North surged 55 percent to one-point-nine million dollars, and drove up total trade volume. Meanwhile, its imports from the North rose two percent to reach 370-thousand dollars.

KOTRA said that Mongolia's number one export item to North Korea, tobacco, accounted for over 92 percent of total exports to the country in monetary terms.

Meanwhile, medicine was found to its biggest import from the North, taking up 78 percent of the total as of November.

Deputy Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry Zagdjav Deleg announced to hold a press conference on Monday. However the Deputy Minister cancelled the meeting for uncertain reasons. According to some sources, the press conference supposed to be about Oyu Tolgoi residual deposits.

In the past, he had stated, “The Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry Sumiyabazar Dolgorsuren has a lobby group in the Parliament. This specific group initiated a plan to split the agreement and will soon present a draft agreement to the parliament. The benefits of Oyu Tolgoi are still invisible to the public and Mongolia`s economy.”

“After three years of operation, the company extracted around 3 million tons of copper extraction alone amounts to 600 thousand tons. no profit gained from this production. Rio Tinto recently raised USD 4.5 billion to finance Oyu Tolgoi. The fund has been split among the stakeholders. Not a single penny was brought into Mongolia. Mongolia`s debt. along with its interest rate, for the 34 percent ownership of Oyu Tolgoi equals around USD 2 billion. Why did company not pay off this debt?

This is the biggest reason why Oyu Tolgoi operations need to stop. However, the public had no information about it, which is regrettable. Therefore, the operation of Oyu Tolgoi must stop” said The Deputy Minister of Mining and heavy Industry at the Cabinet`s session.

Therefore, the Deputy Minister might be planning to bring up Oyu Tolgoi once again at the press conference. He also stated “Many Parliament members oppose the Oyu Tolgoi agreement, which was established in Dubai by the former PM Saikhanbileg Chimed. The current PM Khurelsukh Ukhnaa previously announced to inspect the Oyu Tolgoi agreement once he takes office. If there are illegal actions involved, they had to be settled by international regulations”.

Therefore, sources are saying that Mr. Zagdjav Deleg, the Deputy Mining minister of Khurelskh`s Cabinet, is becoming the first to take initiative in the Oyu Tolgoi issue.