Mongolia faces a hard choice with so many suitors

When the President, the Parliament Speaker and the Prime Minister held a meeting on November 17 at Government Palace, it might not have been billed as a formal meeting of the National Security Council but was effectively one. It also discussed very important issues.

There were others also at the meeting. Apart from the three, chairmen of standing committees and Ministers expressed their views on the proposed railway routes and the meeting also discussed problems of commercial banks. Both issues were closely connected to geo-politics and geo-economics as they affect the country. Parliament has already decided to finalise and adopt a railway policy before the new year, and once this is done, the new routes from Tavan Tolgoi will be clear in principle. It would also imply that the state has completed the primary preparations for the second phase of choosing the Tavan Tolgoi investor.

The list of high ranking foreign officials visiting Mongolia in the last one year has become a very long one. Similarly long is the list of projects in Mongolia in which foreign countries have shown interest in the same period. Private businesses from Russia, China, Japan, Korea, USA, India, Germany, UK and France have expanded their operations. High-level Government delegations of these countries have visited Mongolia to show support to their businesses. It is clear the world is working hard to enter the mining sector of Mongolia. The Mongolian Government has been receiving favourably their proposals with due diplomatic courtesy, without any public hint on what policy it will follow.


Russia

The Russians have been dramatically active right from December, 2008, when they put forward a number of proposals on the railway sector. At a time when the joint Russian-Mongolian Ulaanbaatar Railway sat idle without transit transport and suffered huge losses, the Russians made a proposal to set up a new joint venture. The company named Infrastructure Development was formed in a short time. It was agreed that the two countries would have equal shares. One remarkable feature of this joint venture has been that it always manages to find solutions to any problem in a very short time. V.Morozov has been appointed as the Director of the new joint venture and the Mongolian media did not get the time even to ask why a Mongolian could not be appointed director.

Infrastructure Development LLC is now registered as a Mongolian company. The governing board has such people as a former Mongolian Ambassador to Russia, L.Khangai, and T.Batbold, who has been working in the railway for many years. Major projects have been announced in no time. A blueprint of a railway from Tavan Tolgoi to Sainshand has been already made and V.Yakunin, head of the Russian railway company, has been busy in search of funds to implement the project. An international conference was organized in Ulaanbaatar in the middle of October where the diplomatic corps and international agencies in Mongolia were invited. To coincide with the conference V.Yakunin was shown on Russian TV saying that Mongolia would make a mistake if it wanted to sell its natural resources after processing. All this activism was capped by the Russian President, Prime Minister and Parliament Speaker, all visiting Mongolia within one year.

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