Daily Business News Mongolia

CBC News of Canada reports that,

Close result could delay large mining project led by Canadians

People in Mongolia faced uncertainty Monday after a weekend general election gave neither of the country’s main political parties a clear lead and raised concern about delays to efforts by Canadian and other international mining companies to tap the country’s vast mineral wealth.
Partial results from Sunday’s voting put the incumbent Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party [MPRP] and the opposition Democratic Party in a dead heat, local media reported.
But vote counting in the capital, Ulan Bator, was proceeding slowly and opposition supporters said the city is their main power base and they were confident of a strong showing.
The MPRP had the edge in the sparsely populated countryside, media reports said.
“Ulan Bator is still vague because there is very tough competition. It’s very difficult to predict who’s winning,” pollster Luvsandendev Sumati told Reuters.
Both contenders for power in the vast land that straddles Central and East Asia have supported a draft agreement on exploiting natural resources that would clear the way for a big copper and gold mining project co-managed by Vancouver’s Ivanhoe Mines and RioTinto of Britain.
The two parties differ over the ownership structure of the project, and whether the government or private Mongolian companies should have a controlling stake.
If the mining agreement can be signed by a stable Mongolian government, observers said the country’s potential for mineral and coal exploitation is huge.
Mongolian governments have fallen frequently amid political squabbling in recent years, delaying economic development in a country that has struggled to provide jobs and incomes for its citizens since it stopped being a satellite of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
The MPRD-led Communist government, under Moscow’s tutelage for decades, has been friendly to private investment and enjoyed close relations with the U.S. in recent years.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/30/mongolia-vote.html

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