Mongolia Eyes Changes to Oyu Tolgoi Copper Deal

Reuters Africa reported that according to the Mongolia’s finance minister, S. Bayartsogt, the government is discussing changes to a 2009 investment agreement for the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold deposit.

The market news is quoted as saying:

The 2009 deal gave a 66 percent stake in the multibillion-dollar Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia’s South Gobi region to the Canadian miner Ivanhoe Mines , in which mining giant Rio Tinto now owns a 48.5 percent stake. The government has the remaining 34 percent stake.

Some Mongolian lawmakers hope the country can raise its ownership interest in the project faster, but investors have warned that Mongolia’s mining boom could be slowed by ill-conceived populist policies. The completion of the Oyu Tolgoi investment agreement in 2009 was itself contingent on the annulment of a controversial windfall tax on mining profits set by lawmakers two years earlier.

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