The press conference was co-held by Air Pollution Reduction, Environment, Health and Land Departments of the Ulaanbaatar Administration last Friday, and addressed the implementation of Ulaanbaatar Mayor’s ordinance issued in January and commonly asked questions by citizens.

M.Delgerekh, Head of the Air Pollution Reduction Department said, “National Security Council’s meeting on January 10 concluded that air pollution in the capital city had reached a hazardous level. In scope of the statement, Citizens’ Representative Khural of the capital city and aimags were ordered to draft a set of measures to be taken”.

“Our department has taken several measures, including the implementation of City without Smoke 2030 project and 2016-2020 action plan of Ulaanbaatar Mayor, authorizing specialized inspectors to inspect air pollution in four zones and inspections at steam boilers in Ulaanbaatar. We’ve also installed 200 air filter equipments in 50 kindergartens in the most polluted zones”, he said.

According to him, main markets will begin new standard stove sales from April 1 onwards and furthermore, stove producers will be under inspection. The new stove is estimated to reduce air pollution in the capital by up to 35 percent.

Three-month copper was last 1.1% on the London Metal Exchange to $5,794 a tonne, after it had lost 3.1% last week, the most since December, due partially to a stronger dollar. Earlier, the most-traded copper on the Shanghai Futures Exchange climbed 2.2% to close at 47,560 yuan ($6,887) a tonne.

Disputes at BHP Billiton’s Escondida mine in Chile, the world's biggest copper mine, and Freeport’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia, are having a significant effect on global supplies of concentrate, Jiangxi Copper chairman Li Baomin told the Financial Times over the weekend. “It’s the first time in 15 years that copper concentrate is not overproduced,” he noted.

So far, prices have not reflected the full strength of the supply troubles. The metal, in fact, is up only 4% this year, but copper bulls insist that factors for a push higher are slowly falling into place.

BMI Research, for one, recently raised its 2017 copper price forecast to $5,500 from $5,150 on solid Chinese demand growth and supply interruptions.

Even so, new copper projects at such prices are not appealing at the moment. Based on predictions by Citigroup, the metal needs to rise to about $6,700 a tonne before mining companies commit to new greenfield projects. That means the industry will not likely boost capital spending until 2019.

A workshop themed “Census of degraded land due to mining” “Regulation on mining closure” started today with participation of over 70 specialists of 21 aimags in charge of nature protection and rehabilitation in mining and officials from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Mining Ministry and General Authority of Special Inspection.

“ - The results of this workshop are significant to the implementation of the Government action plan, conducting census on degraded land due to mining in 2017-2018, developing a regulation on mine closure and starting to adhere the regulation” said Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism Ts.Batbayar.

Closing of mine and rehabilitation works are not being done in compliance with the law on Mineral Resources, because regulation on mine closure has not been approved yet.