President of Mongolia Khaltmaagiin Battulga met with Ambassador of Russia to Mongolia Iskander Azizov.

Battulga said the estaliblished diplomatic relations between Mongolia and Russia will turn 100 years this year.

Mongolia has capacity for production of coronavirus vaccine, President Battulga said and asked the Ambassador to consider possibility of production of Russia's coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V in Mongolia and to pass the offer of cooperation to the Kremlin.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved $175 million in funding for an Asian Development Bank (ADB) program to support the Government of Mongolia’s efforts to improve rangeland management and reduce climate vulnerability of its rural economy.

GCF funding, which consists of a $130 million highly concessional loan and a $45 million grant, will supplement a $560 million Aimags and Soums Green Regional Development Investment Program.

The program is co-financed by ADB, the European Investment Bank, the European Union, and the private sector to provide a transformative model on green territorial development and urban–rural linkages where aimags (province) and soums (subprovince) become anchors of green agribusinesses that promote sustainable, resilient, and high-carbon sequestration management in Mongolia’s rangeland. This is the second GCF funding for ADB in Mongolia.

“We are very thankful for GCF’s support and co-financing. Our partnership with GCF reinforces ADB’s strong commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation,” said ADB Director General for East Asia James Lynch. “The program introduces an integrated solution to Mongolia’s multidimensional challenges by balancing its territorial development, reducing migration to Ulaanbaatar, and regenerating natural resources for high-carbon sequestration.”

The program will promote low-carbon, climate-resilient territorial development and green economic diversification by supporting sustainable livestock sector management and reverse rangeland degradation. It will also strengthen local agribusiness value chains to link sustainable herding with low-carbon and climate-resilient business development, and support vulnerable herder groups by empowering them in sustainable rangeland management practice and creating green jobs to overcome the economic downturn related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). With an initial focus on Mongolia’s western aimags, the program promotes climate finance and private sector investment mechanisms that are designed for replicability across the country.

GCF approved the funding at its 28th board meeting. GCF, based in Songdo, Republic of Korea, is a global fund created to help developing countries address the challenge of climate change. GCF has approved total funding of $648 million for 11 ADB projects since 2015.

ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members—49 from the region.

Source: ADB Mongolia Resident Mission

It was reported at today’s press briefing of the Ministry of Health that 170 new cases of COVID-19 have been detected after performing 9,520 tests nationwide in the past 24 hours. This is the highest number of cases detected in a single day since the first domestic coronavirus transmission in the country. The sources of 10 cases are under investigation.

As of today, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Mongolia stands at 4,976. In the past 24 hours, 126 people have been discharged from the hospital, bringing the total number of recoveries to 4,677.

1,365 people are currently undergoing COVID-19 treatment, of which 1,191 are in mild, 159 are in serious, 12 are in critical and three are in very critical health condition.

Within a decade, the world may face a massive shortfall of what’s arguably the most critical metal for global economies: copper.

The copper industry needs to spend upwards of $100 billion to close what could be an annual supply deficit of 4.7 million metric tons by 2030 as the clean power and transport sectors take off, according to estimates from CRU Group. The potential shortfall could reach 10 million tons if no mines get built, according to commodities trader Trafigura Group. Closing such a gap would require building the equivalent of eight projects the size of BHP Group’s giant Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine.

Used in everything from wiring and pipes to batteries and motors, copper is both an economic bellwether and a key ingredient in the push toward renewable power and electric vehicles. If producers fail to address the deficit, prices will keep rising and present a challenge to the Biden administration and other world leaders counting on a worldwide energy transition to fight climate change.

Higher copper prices may lead to more recycling and substitution with cheaper alternatives such as aluminum, which could ease shortfalls.

To be sure, copper projects are in the pipeline. But producers are wary of repeating oversupply mistakes of past cycles by accelerating plans at a time that mines are getting a lot trickier and pricier to build — one reason why copper prices are near decade highs at above $4 a pound.

“Increasing technical complexity and approval delays could lead to a dearth of shovel-ready projects in 2025-30,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Grant Sporre and Andrew Cosgrove wrote this week in a report.

New projects are being developed that may ease copper deficits between 2022 and 2025, according to the BI analysts. Stronger-for-longer prices should make some costlier projects more profitable, while expansions of existing operations normally mean less onerous approval processes than new sites. Still, there’s also considerable execution risk, the BI analysts wrote, particularly in the 2022-23 period.

All eyes are on Indonesia this year, where Freeport-McMoRan Inc. is developing its underground mine at Grasberg. The ramp-up, which has been slower than expected, is set to be done by year end, easing global supplies that have been disrupted by the pandemic. Behind Grasberg is the Kamoa-Kakula project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s scheduled to come online in July, according to co-owner Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.

“After China’s State Reserve Bureau mopped up all of the excess copper from 2020’s Covid-19 slowdown, the market now looks fundamentally tight, with our analysis pointing to at least two years of deficits. With these shortages, alongside investor interest in copper’s decarbonization credentials, we think a price above $8,500 a ton is well supported.”

Grant Sporre, BI metals & mining analyst

Anglo American Plc’s Quellaveco project in Peru may start producing next year as long as community relations don’t sour, as they have done elsewhere from time to time in the South American country.

The ability of producers to meet growing supply demands will also depend on Southern Copper Corp., which wants to tap more of the industry’s biggest reserves to almost double output by 2028.

A chunk of next decade’s new supply could come from the Reko Diq deposit in Pakistan, which has been fraught with political and legal uncertainties, as well as Tampakan in the Philippines.

Companies are having to engage communities and governments much earlier in project development these days given rising social and environmental awareness and expectations. Partly as a result, the average lead time from first discovery to first metal has increased by four years from previous cycles to almost 14 years, according to BI.

“Ironically, a keener focus on the environmental impact of mining activities has left the industry unable to respond quickly to market deficits through new supply, despite the price being well above an incentive price,” Sporre and Cosgrove wrote.

The irony isn’t likely lost on the top brass of the world’s biggest copper producers. Freeport Chief Executive Officer Richard Adkerson told an industry gathering last week that even if copper soared to $10 a pound tomorrow, it would take his company seven or eight years to get new production to the market.

(By James Attwood, with assistance from Andy Hoffman)

Mongolian Business Database NGO (MBD) is pleased to circulate our 1000th issue of "MBD Daily News Bulletin"! Launched in 2017 the Bulletin reaches 7800 active business leaders, professionals, diplomatic missions and international organizations based in Mongolia and abroad. The subscribers' number is constantly expanding.

"MBD Daily News Bulletin" is a permanent function of MBD. We aim to be the "Bridge of your business with Mongolia". Our B2B portal site, www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com, continues to lead Google's "Mongolia Business" search list with active visitors from approximately 100 countries.

MBD's key mission is to promote and develop "Doing business with Mongolia"-related B2B facilitations. We are pleased to report many successful export, import and distribution cases involving Mongolian, Russian, Czech Republic, Scotland (UK), and Pakistan businesses. These joint projects were typically initiated by MBD and then nurtured and pushed forward through our diligent efforts.

My partners and I extend best wishes for your business success as well as good health on the occasion of our 1000th "MDB Daily News Bulletin" issue!

BOARD OF MBD

SER OD Ichinkhorloo

Founder & CEO

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers, professors and actor Daniel Dae Kim said the Asian-American community was reeling from a year of heightened anti-Asian attacks in a congressional hearing held just days after the killing of six Asian women in Georgia.

Thursday’s hearing, which was scheduled before the attack, aimed to examine a spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans, which rose by 149% in 2020 in 16 major cities compared with 2019, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“Our community is bleeding, we are in pain and for the last year we’ve been screaming out for help,” Democratic Representative Grace Meng told the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Experts have linked the surge to the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, after some Americans, including Republican former President Donald Trump, started calling the coronavirus the “China virus,” “the China plague” and even “kung flu.”

A 21-year-old white man has been charged with killing eight people, six of them Asian women, at three spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday. Police are investigating motives and have not ruled out the possibility that the attacks were provoked, at least in part, by anti-immigrant or anti-Asian sentiments.

The spike in anti-Asian American incidents in the past year included people being slashed with a box cutter, lit on fire and verbal harassment, said Steve Cohen, the subcommittee’s Democratic chair.

“All the pandemic did was exacerbate latent anti-Asian prejudices that have a long, long and ugly history in America,” said Cohen.

Kim, best known for starring in the television series “Lost” and “Hawaii Five-0,” called on lawmakers to pass legislation to fund groups that provide counseling to victims of hate crimes and improve data collection for hate crime reporting.

“What happens right now and over the course of the coming months will send a message for generations to come as to whether we matter, as to whether the country we call home chooses to erase us or include us,” said Kim.

In the closely divided House, the hearing quickly lapsed into partisan politics.

In a sprawling opening speech, Republican lawmaker Chip Roy said the subject matter was important, but then moved on to attacking China’s treatment of its Uighur community and handling of the coronavirus.

He added he hoped the hearing would address how affirmative action policies by U.S. universities hurt Asian Americans.

Repeatedly, Democratic lawmakers referred to Roy’s comments in their own statements.

“Your president and your party and your colleagues can talk about issues with any other country that you want, but you don’t have to do it by putting a bull’s eye on the back of Asian Americans across this country, on our grandparents, on our kids,” said Meng.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said U.S. President Joe Biden, who will be meeting with Asian-American leaders on Friday in Atlanta, was determined to be “part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Scott Malone and Sonya Hepinstall

March 18 (Xinhua) -- Extreme wintry weather, known as dzud in Mongolia, killed a total of 540,400 livestock across the country in the first two months of this year, marking a threefold increase from the same period last year, according to data released by the country's National Statistics Office (NSO) on Thursday.

Dzud is a Mongolian term to describe the frigid winter that comes after a dry summer and causes numerous livestock to die of starvation or cold.

Over half of Mongolia's all 21 provinces have now been suffering dzud or near-dzud conditions, according to the country's Food and Agriculture Ministry.

Around 85 percent of the dead animals were goats and sheep, the NSO said.

Animal husbandry is the backbone of the landlocked country's economy as nearly 40 percent of its nomad population depend on animal husbandry for livelihood.

Mongolia had 67.1 million heads of livestock at the end of 2020, according to the statistical agency.

Thousands of herders lose their animals almost every year due to dzud. In 2016, more than 1 million farm animals died from extreme weather conditions. Enditem

An online meeting of the heads of the Mongolian and Russian parts of the Mongolia-Russia Intergovernmental Commission on trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation was held on March 17, Montsame reports.

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister of Mongolia S.Amarsaikhan expressed his satisfaction with the development of traditional friendly relations and cooperation between the two neighbors, even in the difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mongolia received the first batch of Sputnik-V vaccines and started immunizing its citizens. The pandemic can be curbed with joint efforts, said Mr. Amarsaikhan.

As part of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Mongolia and Russia, it was proposed to involve Russian businessmen in Mongolian industrial and trade forums, and to organize joint business forums and exhibitions in major Russian cities.

The meeting discussed bilateral relations and cooperation in trade, economy, transportation, energy, industry, construction, agriculture, environment and humanities. The parties also noted that the project on the construction of gas pipeline connecting Russia and China through the territory of Mongolia is in full swing. They also stressed that works and events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations are being organized in accordance with the joint plan.

Engineering, procurement and construction contractor Bodi International has entered into an agreement with Progress Rail, a Caterpillar Company, to purchase 16 EMD locomotives for Mongolia’s Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait Railway project.

Construction on the 155-mile Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait Railway, which will be operated by Mongolian-government-owned Tavan Tolgoi Railway Co., is expected to be completed in 2022.

The new locomotives are designed for the 1,520 mm (4 feet, 9.84 inch) broad gauge line and will be powered by 16-cyclinder EMD 710 Series units rated at 4,500 BHP (3,355 kW). The locos are compliant with International Union of Railways and EU Stage IIIA emissions standards. Progress Rail anticipates locomotive deliveries to begin in 2022.

The SD70ACe/LW for Mongolia is similar to units built for Russia, and competes directly with the Wabtec (GE) 4,400-hp unit for international markets sometimes offered under the model name TE33A.

Mongolia has released the results of its 2020 nationwide snow leopard survey, showing that there are 953 of these adult big cats in the country.

WWF-Mongolia, and partners including the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, the Snow Leopard Trust, and the Irbis Mongolia Centre, have successfully completed the large-scale study to assess the current range and the population size of the animal in Mongolia with support from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia.

The assessment, initiated in 2017, was completed with more than 40 field surveys, involving over 500 people: researchers from the partner organizations, the National University of Mongolia and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, rangers from the State Protected Areas, and local people.

The survey covers 406800 square meters area; in addition, scientists installed cameras on 29 mountains which provided photographic evidence of the elusive big cats in their natural habitat.

The effort is part of a larger push to understand the distribution and population status of the snow leopard across the entire South Gobi landscape, parts of which have been identified by the Mongolian government as a priority area to be secured as a habitat for the snow leopard under the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP). This is a very large landscape; in total, it’s some 327, 000 km2 and includes parts of three Mongolian provinces.

Known as a shy and mysterious big cat which is also incredibly well camouflaged, the snow leopard is an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. The presence of a healthy population of the big cat in Mongolia shows that high mountain ecosystems remain healthy, which is critical as they are the source of water for millions of people downstream. The snow leopard is found in 12 countries.