Our reporter talks to State Property Committee Chief D.Sugar on issues relating to Tavantolgoi shares.   
 
When will citizens receive their shares?    
I think the shares would be distributed before Naadam. Two things have to be done before that. First, unit prices of shares have to be settled and  this would depend on the second, and more important, job. This is determining the total value of the Tavantolgoi deposit. This should be made by a company whose estimate would command international respect, encouraging foreign investment in Erdenes Tavantolgoi LLC. We are working on selection of one or more investment banks for this. Once the worth of the deposit is estimated, that would be divided into 15 billion shares so that the unit price would be known.    
We hope to finish by March all preparatory work relating to both distribution of free shares to citizens and sale of shares at predetermined prices to economic entities. These will be common shares, as decided by Parliament.  
 
Will citizens be allowed to trade their shares?    
There will be an initial lock-in period when citizens will not be permitted to sell, but they would be free to buy more shares at the Mongolian Stock Exchange.   

How will shares be sold to economic entities?    
We have a list of such entities and expect to offer them 30,000 shares each. They will be able to trade these at market rates.    

What do citizens have to do to claim their shares?    
They should be in the new civil registration list and also have been counted in the last census. The Government will do all the work for a small charge. They have to open a brokerage account and details of all such accounts will be kept in a central center. This center will confirm issue of shares after checking all data and citizens will then receive the share certificates.    

How many investment banks would be selected from the 16 that have expressed interest?
We hope to raise between USD2 billion and USD4 billion from the world market and maybe this is too much for one bank. So maybe we should select three or four banks. I cannot say anything more on this now.