An Oyu Tolgoi copper shipment was announced twice but delayed. The first announcement said that copper export was scheduled on June 14th but was delayed. The second announcement gave the target date of June 21st but was again delayed with no new date given.

The first export shipment of the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper mine was the main issue during Friday`s meeting on Transparent Mining. The Ministry of Mining holds the meeting every month. The meeting began with reports made by the Mining Minister D.Gankhuyag.

The Minister D.Gankhuyag said that some foreign media outlets reported that Rio Tinto claimed its plan to start shipping copper from the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine on June 21st has been delayed at the request of the Mongolian government.

However he affirmed that the reason behind the delay of the first export of Oyu Tolgoi had nothing to do with the Government of Mongolia. D.Gankhuyag made a statement saying, “I need to say officially what the reason is regarding Oyu Tolgoi LLC.

The first export of Oyu Tolgoi has been delayed because Oyu Tolgoi LLC failed to present the sales agreement to the Board of Directors to be passed by them.

The sales agreement cost is estimated to be approximately 8 billion US dollars. According to article 88.1 of company law, the Boards of Directors must approve such a large agreement first. But the Oyu Tolgoi company failed to present the sales agreement to Mongolian members of the Board of Directors.

The second thing is that Oyu Tolgoi plans to transfer sales revenue to offshore zones tariff free.

In return we suggest Oyu Tolgoi transfer sales revenue via any commercial bank of Mongolia in case the company hesitates to present the sales agreement to the Mongolian side.”