Mining Minister says Mongolia has no plans to sell its Oyu Tolgoi shares

Mongolia has no plans to sell or downsize its 34 percent stake in the Oyu Tolgoi mine Minister of Mining Ts.Dashdorj told Reuters on the sidelines of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference in Toronto.

Oyu Tolgoi is jointly owned by the Government of Mongolia (34 percent) and Turquoise Hill Resources (66 percent), which Rio Tinto holds a 51 percent majority stake in.

“Our ministry has to find out all possible options that are good for Mongolia, and within that framework, we are researching all possibilities. Currently, there is no such plan, but it is something that we can watch,” Minister Ts.Dashdorj told Reuters.

Many analysts have highlighted Mongolia’s need to prioritize mining royalty taxes instead of pushing for ownership stakes.

In October 2016, Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques told Bloomberg that Mongolia won’t receive any dividends from the giant Oyu Tolgoi mine for 10 years.

“We shouldn’t forget that Oyu Tolgoi is a long-term project,” Jacques said in an interview with Bloomberg TelevisionMongolia. “It will take us five years to build the infrastruc-
ture and seven to nine years to ramp it up.”

“Until we get to a steady state, which is clearly 10 years down the road, we will not pay a dividend to anybody,” he said.

Source: Theubpost