Canada is Mongolia’s
second-highest export partner after China, as also the largest foreign investor
in Mongolia’s resource sector, with about 25 firms active in the country, says
a recent report in The Toronto Star. Canadian companies spent an estimated
USD500 million in 2008 on drilling and improvements to their properties, a
figure that will grow rapidly as the industry expands. In Mongolia’s emerging
economy, Canadian subsidiaries and joint-venture projects are enjoying both
pop-the-cork success as well as the challenge of operating in a young
democracy. 

Billed as the largest
undeveloped copper-gold mine in the world, Oyu Tolgoi LLC will be the project
that changes everything for Mongolia. The capital cost to bring the mine into
production in 2013 is estimated at USD7.3 billion, in a country where the GDP
is only USD4.2 billion. It took the project’s majority owner, Vancouver-based
Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., years of negotiating to reach the landmark 2009 agreement
with the Mongolian government. Ensuring tax stability for Ivanhoe and partner
Rio Tinto, and a 34 per cent stake for Mongolia, the agreement was enough to boost
the country’s international investment rating.

The project returns are
expected to be huge: production of 1.2 billion pounds of copper and 650,000
ounces of gold every year for the first decade beginning in 2013, and a mine
life estimated at 45 years or more. “It is a phenomenal ore body,” said CEO
Keith Marshall. “It has to be exceptional to be developed in such a remote
location.” Remote is a relative term, of course. Sure, the nearest paved road
is 500 km from the mine and the project will have to get its electricity from
China for the first nine years. Many vocational schools closed after the Soviet
regime collapsed in 1990, so the company plans to build its own colleges to
train the huge labor force required. But approval for Oyu Tolgoi indicated that
the country may be ideally situated, adjacent to the roaring Chinese economic
engine.

“It’s a great opportunity,”
says John Ross Davies, country manager for Major Drilling Mongol LLC, part of a
New Brunswick-based company that is one of the top three contract drillers in
the world. “The hype on (Oyu Tolgoi) is sending the message to the rest of the
world that this is the place to be.” Other corporate heavyweights have come
looking for prospects as the government improves the regulatory climate to
attract mining firms. Still, Mongolia is considered a risky place to invest, as
some Canadian companies are discovering. The Fraser Institute’s 2009-10 survey
of mining companies measures the effects of government policy in 72
jurisdictions around the world. Mongolia ranked in the bottom 10, along with
Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Mining is set to transform
the country’s economy, but building the infrastructure to get that mineral
wealth to market is the major challenge. What’s needed is a transportation
necklace across the country, including 2,000 kilometers of railway tracks,
7,800 km of roads and 100,000 new housing units, says the transportation
ministry.

Mongolians want jobs as well
as taxes and royalties, in a country where unskilled laborers in the city make
as little as USD3 a day. By comparison, a driller with two years training can
earn USD4,000 a month in Mongolia – even more on the international job market.
“The vision is to grow the GDP by processing natural resources rather than
extracting and exporting,” says Mr. C.Ganbat, who returned after six years as a
Wall Street investment banker to become team leader of a government investment
task force. “Industrialization could create that middle class for Mongolia.”

Until the revenues begin
filling government coffers in a big way, mining companies are providing their
own largesse. A rural development project financed by CIDA and local companies
such as Boroo Gold Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Canadian firm Centerra Gold Inc.,
trained poor families in vegetable farming and marketing in Mongolia’s fertile
northern region.

Junior mining company Entree
Gold Inc., currently exploring on its South Gobi properties, consults the local
governor every year to see what projects are most urgent. The company has spent
millions on improvements from a new activity centre and pharmacy to a herd of
goats and fodder for a region hard hit last year by the exceptionally cold
winter. “We could give nothing and still get our permits,” said Entree
operations manager Kelly Patterson. “Or you can do it the right way.”