Bilateral trade between China and Russia has “undoubtedly” been affected by the Covid pandemic but is expected to surpass $100 billion by the end of the year, according to the China Overseas Development Association (CODA).

Its secretary general, He Zhenwei, told RIA Novosti that "although the epidemic is currently affecting cooperation, trade between the two countries will show significant growth, particularly in the second half of the year.”

Domestic demand in China is continuously increasing and Russia is boosting exports to the country, he said. He also noted that Russia produces environmentally friendly non-GMO products.

Trade between the two countries has been growing, and in 2019 Moscow and Beijing said they had eliminated all barriers that could impede their fast-developing cooperation. The two sides also announced the ambitious goal of doubling the volume of trade to $200 billion by 2024.

China’s new ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, said that Beijing considers Moscow a trusted partner and is opening its markets more and more to Russian goods. The diplomat added that while Beijing was embroiled in an escalating trade war with Washington and was cutting imports from the US, especially agricultural products, it needed new suppliers, and sees Russia as a good replacement.

“We will choose a new supplier. And Russia is the most reliable one,” said Zhang.

Turquoise Hill said on Thursday hedge fund Odey Asset Management’s letter to its majority owner Rio Tinto contained a number of false assumptions and misinformation about the company and its funding plan.

“Odey has a clear financial motive to depress Turquoise Hill’s share price,” Turquoise Hill said.

Shares of Turquoise Hill sank on Wednesday after the hedge fund said it did not believe the $4.4 billion project finance package related to the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia is accurately described as “project” finance.

Turquoise Hill, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, owns two-thirds of the Oyu Tolgoi giant copper mine with the rest owned by the Mongolian government. The mine is Rio’s biggest copper growth project, but it has faced geological challenges and legal setbacks.

Odey said Rio Tinto was allowing a false market for Turquoise Hill’s shares with a rights issue from the Canadian company on the horizon. The hedge fund owns shares in Rio Tinto and has a short position in Turquoise Hill.

In a letter to Rio Tinto’s finance chief Jakob Stausholm, the fund said Turquoise Hill would require an $8.9 billion rights issue after delays and budget overruns at Oyu Tolgoi.

“Indeed, Odey has sought to ask questions on both Rio Tinto’s and Turquoise Hill’s public earnings calls, but Odey has not been given the opportunity on these calls to propose any such questions, limiting the opportunity for greater public scrutiny of the Oyu Tolgoi investment case,” the investment firm said.

In July, Rio Tinto said it cut estimated reserves at its underground copper mine extension of Oyu Tolgoi and confirmed it would face delays and higher costs after ground instability forced it to redesign the mine plan.

Turquoise Hill said Thursday that an additional $1.1 billion would need to be sourced with further bank debt, bonds or a metal stream should it and Rio re-profile existing debt and raise an additional $500 million of debt as contemplated.

The company said it would need to raise additional equity of at least $3 billion if neither the re-profiling nor additional debt or hybrid financing is completed.

Midday Thursday, Turquoise Hill’s stock was down 9.8% on the NYSE. The company has a $1.94 billion market capitalization.

(With files from Reuters)

The 16th meeting of Mongolia-China Intergovernmental Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was held online on November 23. The meeting was co-chaired by Deputy Prime Minister of Mongolia Ya.Sodbaatar and Chinese Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan and attended by delegates from corresponding ministries and authorities of the two countries.

During the meeting, Chinese side informed the decision of Hubei prefecture and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China to donate medical equipment and items worth CNY 4 million to Mongolia to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, the sides concurred to enrich Intergovernmental Cooperation Plan to forward Mongolia’s Steppe Road plan and China’s Belt and Road initiative with new content and implement it as well as to renew mid-term program for Mongolia-China trade and economic cooperation.

While expressing commitment to actively cooperate for achieving a goal to bring bilateral trade turnover to USD 10 billion, the sides voiced to closely collaborate for ensuring normal bilateral trade and economic cooperation as much as possible amid the pandemic situation and to continue measures such as “Green Gateway”, Mongolia-China temporary regulation on border crossing ports further.

In the frameworks of deepening railroad cooperation with a view to support trade and transit transportation between the two countries, the delegates also exchanged views on matters including defining railway border crossing point at the Gashuunsukhait-Gantsmod border crossing port, renewing Mongolia and China Border Railway Agreement and opening of Khangi-Mandal railway border checkpoint

Support from coal miners helped Donald Trump win the US presidency four years ago. Now, the leader of the nation’s top mining union is calling on Trump to “move on”, adding that ongoing efforts to challenge vote counts and pressure state elections officials are a “threat to our entire form of government and the American way of life.”

While the US General Services Administration — the federal agency that allows the transition process to begin — said late on Monday President-elect Joe Biden’s team could get in touch to begin changeover, Trump continues to hold on to power.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday he would soon present evidence of widespread ballot fraud and other wrongdoing in “great detail” in a “big lawsuit”.

The president of the United Mine Workers of America International (UMW or UMWA), Cecil E. Roberts, said Trump’s relentless denial of Biden’s victory is putting the US on a path to subvert “the very foundation of what actually does make America great — government of, by and for the people.”

“The cockamamie notion that there was some plot launched in a failed state in South America that somehow affected the count of millions of voters is just absurd,” Roberts said in a statement issued Friday.

“Whether you like the outcome or not, the American people have spoken, and their will must now be placed ahead of everything else.”

The union, which represents around 80,000 mine workers, did not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

Digging coal, but down

Trump’s campaign vowed to “give back” coal miners their lost jobs, but that promise was never fulfilled. During the July-September period, the coal sector recorded a new low in average employment with just 40,458 posts, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Despite a slight increase in coal production in the third quarter compared to the previous one, average coal mining employment fell 23.6% from the first quarter of 2017, when Trump took office, to the most recent quarter,” S&P Global reported.

While Trump stocked his administration with coal-industry executives and lobbyists, took hefty donations from the industry and rolled back environmental regulations, coal’s decline only accelerated in recent years.

Production of the commodity was down 31.5% in the third quarter of the year compared to the first quarter of 2017, when Trump took office.

Total production in 2020 is expected to decline to 511 million tonnes, down from 775 million tonnes in 2017. That 34% fall is the largest four-year production drop since at least 1932, data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows.

Exacerbated by the effects of disruptions related to the spread of covid-19 , the industry downturn has translated into 5,300 coal mining jobs, or nearly 10%, being eliminated during Trump’s administration.

European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) published a proposed airworthiness directive on Tuesday that could see Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft cleared within weeks after a 20-month grounding over two deadly crashes.

The publication of the directive opens a 28-day public consultation period after which the agency will review the input and then approve the aircraft for flight. According to the agency, the step signals “its intention to approve the aircraft to return to Europe’s skies within a matter of weeks.”

The move by EASA follows last week’s flight clearance for the 737 MAX in the US by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). FAA chief Stephen Dickson said that he was “100 percent comfortable with [his] family flying on it.”

EASA’s Executive Director Patrick Ky said in a statement on Tuesday: “EASA made clear from the outset that we would conduct our own objective and independent assessment of the 737 MAX, working closely with the FAA and Boeing, to make sure that there can be no repeat of these tragic accidents, which touched the lives of so many people.

“I am confident that we have left no stone unturned in our assessment of the aircraft with its changed design approach,” he added.

According to EASA, the “fundamental problem” of the 737’s new software function program, which was intended to make the aircraft easier to handle, was that many pilots did not even know it was there.

Regulators grounded the troubled Boeing aircraft worldwide in March 2019, after two almost-new 737 MAX planes crashed within five months of one another. The crashes, which occurred in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killed all 346 people on board. They prompted a lengthy safety review that was met by numerous delays, driving up losses and costs for Boeing.

In both crashes, the new flight control software caused the aircraft to unexpectedly nosedive shortly after takeoff.

A Mongolian tech start-up is preparing to expand through a pioneering new method of attracting investors.

erxes is a software company that merges multiple tools into one application. (image via erxes)erxes is a software company that merges multiple tools into one application. (image via erxes)

erxes is a software company that merges multiple tools into one application. (image via erxes)

Erxes (stylized as erxes, all lower case) is a software company that merges marketing, sales and customer service tools into one application. It was founded by three Mongolian entrepreneurs in 2017; Mend-Orshikh Amartaivan (MJ), Bat-Amar Battulga and Naran Batjargal, who are now the company’s chief executive officer, chief technical officer and chief operating officer respectively.

The trio aim to take market share from companies that offer marketing and management software individually, such as Mailchimp (email marketing) and ConvertFlow (website conversion). According to its website, erxes says its single application, which costs $29 per month for five people, could save small marketing teams thousands of dollars every year.

“We have 18 staff in three offices,” MJ said to Mongolia Weekly. “Due to these challenging times, we're operating from the Mongolia office, as all core members are Mongolian nationals. We have a few remote staff working from the US and France.

"In 2021, we're planning to set up our US office.”

The idea started after the founders had worked in tech for a while but couldn’t find software that could wrap different services into one application.

“We couldn't find a complete solution that addressed our needs,” MJ said. “That's when we decided to create a customizable customer engagement platform. The main goal was to meet the unique needs and requirements of each startup or company at a reasonable price.”

In the three years since it started, the company’s software has been picked up by KFC, Xerox, Toyota, Volkswagen, Toto, Pizza Hut and others.

In order to fund more growth, erxes has chosen to undertake what’s known as a Continuous Agreement for Future Equity (CAFE), which is based on the continuous securities offering (CSO) approach. It allows investors to make cash investments in a company at any single time to get company equity at a later date.

This means erxes will put 9 percent of their equity on the market, allow the market to say what it thinks the company is worth, and raise money when that valuation goes up.

According to Fairmont, this approach avoids some of the barriers associated with traditional public offerings, such as issuing a fixed number of shares and negotiating their price with investors.

Another key difference is that erxes won’t be listed on any public stock exchange. Instead, it will simply have an ‘Invest Now’ button on its website.

The CSO model doesn’t necessarily mean the company won’t hold a traditional IPO sometime in the future, although Amartaivan said that the approach isn’t on the cards for now.

“We're still open to any opportunity that might arise in the future,” he said. “But we're not expecting to launch a traditional IPO anytime soon, as it does not align with our current focus.”

Over the next two years, Amartaivan says the company is focused on setting up shop in the US to improve their customer experience.

“We're planning to set up our US team in the upcoming year. This will allow us to provide faster and smoother customer service,” he said. “It's kind of a no-brainer considering more than 40 percent of our existing 1 million downloads and the majority of our SaaS customers are from the US.”

Even though erxes is now hitting the big time, it remains keenly focused on its Mongolian roots and the role it plays in diversifying the Mongolian economy beyond mining. Amartaivan told Mongolia Weekly that he’s optimistic about the tech industry in Mongolia.

“People are getting hired as remote engineers for foreign tech companies,” he said. “Some are setting up offices in Mongolia as a gateway to other Asian markets. So, I think this is proof that there is a bigger potential in Mongolia.

“One of our goals is to bring forth Mongolian engineers on the global tech stage. Once we pass this benchmark, hopefully, it will set the path and make it easier for other Mongolian startups to follow.”

On 23 November 2020, the European Union and Mongolia took stock of their good trade relations, and looked at opportunities to further strengthen their bilateral trade and investment cooperation agenda.

The discussion took place at the third annual sub-committee on trade and investment in the framework of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Mongolia, which entered into force in 2017.

On trade, the Parties:

discussed ways for Mongolia to make better use of tariff preferences under the special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance (GSP+) as part of the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences;

followed up on Mongolia’s GSP+ commitments, including in the areas of child labour and environmental protection;

took note of positive results from the European Commission’s Trade Related Assistance for Mongolia (TRAM) project;

discussed a possible bilateral agreement on geographical indications, and;

explored a possible regular dialogue on food safety and animal and plant health.

They also discussed the investment environment in both markets and the EU’s concerns on some Mongolian laws hindering foreign investment.

Next steps

The sub-committee on trade and investment will be followed by the EU-Mongolia Joint Committee on 3 December 2020 via videoconference. The Joint Committee (chaired alternately by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) is entrusted to ensure the proper functioning of the PCA, set priorities in relation to its aims, and make recommendations for promoting the objectives of the agreement.

Background

In 2017 the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Mongolia entered into force. On trade, the PCA commits the Parties to establish a dialogue on food safety and plant and animal health, cooperate on investment, facilitate trade, and implement international standards as well as to cooperate on GSP+ and support Mongolia’s economic diversification.

In 2019, trade between the European Union and Mongolia amounted to €562 million, which makes the EU Mongolia’s fourth biggest trading partner. The value of EU exports accounted for €486 million and consisted mainly of industrial goods (82.6%) and agricultural products (17.2%). In the same year, Mongolia’s total exports to the EU amounted to €76 million, of which 87% were agricultural products and 33% industrial goods

Mongolia registered 32 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the national caseload to 672, the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases (NCCD) said Tuesday.

"A total of 4,335 tests for COVID-19 were conducted across the country yesterday and 32 of them were positive," said Amarjargal Ambaselmaa, head of the NCCD's Surveillance Department, at a press conference.

The latest confirmed cases are locally transmitted. A total of 245 such cases have been reported so far across the country.

Domestically transmitted cases have been reported in the capital city of Ulan Bator and provinces of Selenge, Darkhan-Uul, Govisumber, Orkhon and Dornogovi.

More than half of the total domestically transmitted cases were reported in the northern Mongolian province of Selenge which borders Russia.

Until mid-November, many Mongolian citizens had returned home from Russia via Altanbulag border point in Selenge province, and international freight transport trucks had entered Mongolia through the border point.

The first locally transmitted case was a woman whose 29-year-old husband, a transport driver, returned from Russia and tested positive for the virus four days after he was released from a 21-day mandatory isolation on Nov. 6.

The country has imposed a nationwide lockdown until Dec. 1 to halt the virus's spread and identify all people who had contact with locally transmitted COVID-19 patients. Enditem

XacBank, a leading universal bank in Mongolia, and Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys on Tuesday announced the selection of Finacle’s core banking, treasury, and corporate banking solution suites to power bank’s digital transformation.

The Finacle solution suite will enable the bank to drive all-round business transformation to improve customer engagement, operational excellence, and the flexibility to launch tailored offerings on-demand, for continuous innovation and growth. With Finacle digital core banking suite, XacBank will gain a comprehensive set of capabilities and an open platform to establish a robust foundation for its digital future. The digital product factory will enable the bank to evolve its offerings at speed to keep in sync with market dynamics, a statement from the company said.

Tsevegjav Gumenjav, Chief Executive Officer, XacBank, said, “at XacBank, we aspire to be the preferred bank in Mongolia for all our customers' segments, by providing a modern digital banking experience, while securely serving their financial needs. To power our leadership position into the future, in an increasingly competitive environment, we felt the need for a modern platform. Given its growing deployment base in Mongolia, Finacle is a proven solution for our needs. With Finacle’s new-age digital core banking platform, I believe we are well placed to meet the present and future demands of our customers with ease while contributing to the economic development of Mongolia," Gumenjav said.

“Ulaanbaatar MMC Energy” has qualified for the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final 2020, which will take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on December 18-19, 2020. To qualify, the teams had to finish inside the Top 12 in the World Tour season standings after the last Masters.

Here's the list of the 12 participating teams sorted by tour standings:

1. Riga (LAT) - 320 pts

2. Liman (SRB) - 320 pts

3. NY Harlem (USA) - 179 pts

4. Novi Sad (SRB) - 170 pts

5. Utena Uniclub (LTU) - 150 pts

6. Jeddah (KSA) - 140 pts

7. Lausanne Katapult (SUI) - 135 pts

8. Piran (SLO) - 130 pts

9. Sakiai Gulbele (LTU) - 118 pts

10. Ub (SRB) - 98 pts

11. Ulaanbaatar MMC Energy (MGL) - 53 pts

12. Amsterdam (NED) - 50pts

Amsterdam and Princeton were tied with 50 points and the same winning percentage and the Dutch qualified based on the third tie-breaker, points average.

Utena Uniclub, Ub and Ulaanbaatar MMC Energy will make their debut at a World Tour Final (the latter becoming the first-ever Mongolian team to do it).

The other nine already featured last year at the Utsunomiya Final, which saw Novi Sad win their 4th FIBA 3x3 World Tour title.