Bloomberg: Mongolia could lose coal for $120M

Mongolia’s prime minister met with protesters in sub-zero temperatures to try and calm public anger about an estimated $120 million worth of missing coal, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai met with protesters on December 7 to ask the crowd to trust government to investigate and punish “coal thieves.” People have been demonstrating since Sunday in the capital Ulaanbaatar to protest reports that 385,000 tons of coal was missing from stockpiles at the border with China.

On December 6, in an address to the nation the prime minister tried to convince people that the current situation is going to improve, calling China’s eased testing requirements “good news” for Mongolia’s exports and arguing that eased border conditions would impact inflation too.

However, even if China further eases restrictions on imports as it looks to exit from Covid Zero, there are still factors that will drag on trade, including the incomplete railway to the border. Another problem is Mongolia uses a different standard of railway gauge, meaning all the minerals and other goods have to be transferred to new wagons to cross the border into China.