The Mongolia Investment Summit 2013 was held in Hong Kong last week.

The
third edition of the Mongolia Investment Summit was hosted in the Four
Seasons Hotel where 350 major investment decision makers and Mongolian
organisations and operators alongside key government representatives
from 15 countries were brought together. During the summit Mongolian
based business companies delivered addresses, presented their workshops
outside of the conference hall and promoted their projects.

At the
summit the Mongolia Government was represented by the Minister for Road
and Transportation, A.Gansukh, State Secretary of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs G.Tsogtsaikhan, Director of Invest Mongolia Agency,
S.Javkhlanbaatar, Head of International Cooperation Division, Ministry
of Mining, Kh.Amarjargal and the Director of National Agricultural
Extension Center, Ministry of Industry and Agriculture, L.Duursakh.

Each
Mongolian Government representative emphasized that Mongolia has
improved the legal environment  passing a new law on foreign investment
defining business rules. They spread the message of a win –win situation
in Mongolia. The Summit began with an interview of the Minister for
Road and Transportation, A.Gansukh, by Mia Saini of Bloomberg TV.

Mongolian
State Owned Companies also participated including Erdenes Mongolia LLC
and Erdenes Tavantolgoi LLC. The CEO of Erdenes Tavantolgoi,
Ya.Batsuuri, delivered an address and introduced their project.

The
newly appointed President and CEO of Oyutolgoi LLC, Craig Kinnell,
delivered a speech where everyone was anticipating to hear about the
timing of project finance and the continued underground construction.
Instead he talked about security and safety in mining.  Craig Kinnell
said finally “like everyone, I was anticipating the day that the issues
under discussion would be resolved. But speed is not the measure of
success. Success is judged by producing a better and stronger Oyu
Tolgoi, built on a trusting partnership that will stand the test of
time.”

The President of Central Bank of Mongolia, N.Zoljargal, took
part at Summit for the second time to make a speech and also gave an
interview to the Wall Street Journal. With the interview he brought
cautious but positive expectation of investment in Mongolia to
investors. He said that Mongolian economic growth is expected to be
better than 11 percent and in 2014 closer to 17 percent on 2011.
N.Zoljargal then emphasized that Mongolia updated the investment law,
passed a new security law and enhanced sustainability guarantees so he
believed Mongolia would attract a new foreign investment flow and that
the massive Oyu Tolgoi project would be sped up so the Mongolian economy
would benefit from the resultant 4 billion US dollars.

But investors
cry out that bigger and more participation of Mongolian state owned
companies make a smaller space for private companies to operate. Foreign
investors complained that Mongolians always talk about larger projects
but the projects they run are more often than not dragged from election
to election. As examples they used Power Plant -5 and the two railroads
that were planned to be built from Tavantolgoi to Nariinsukhait.  The
private sector launched the project but the Government halted it. The
time has come to put these railroads to use to transport coal. But
Mongolia still wastes time.