Shenhua to Import 30-50mn Tons of Coke from Mongolia

Shenhua to Import 30-50mn Tons of Coke from Mongolia

BEIJING, Dec 05, 2013 (Menafn - SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) --Chinese coal producer Shenhua Group Corp. Ltd. will import 30 million to 50 million tons of coke from Mongolia per year in the future.

Zhang Guangjun, deputy general manager with THE Shenhua Science and Technology Research Institute, disclosed at a forum on December 4 that it would import 30 million to 50 million tons of coke from Mongolia per year in the future. Available data shows that the nation imported a total of about 30 million tons of coke in the first half of this year and in line with industry observers, the import of Shenhua will deliver a strong impact on the domestic coke market.

It has taken the group about a decade to gain the exploitation right of Mongolia-based Tavan Tolgoi coal mine, one of the biggest unexploited coal mines in the wold. However, due to policy factors, it has not achieved the goal yet. Information the China National Coal Association (CNCA) released on its website at the start of November shows that it had signed a MoU with three Mongolian firms, namely ETT, ER and TT, on railway construction cooperation and boosting coal trade. And in line with some industry observers, this is a prelude to its success in gaining the exploitation right.

Zhang reiterated that its failure to gain the exploitation right had a close tie with foreign investment policies of Mongolian and so far, the government had even not reached a conclusion internally. It released new policies for foreign investments not long ago and the policies would make it easy for the group to gain the exploitation right.

People in the circle said at the start of October that Mongolia released new policies for foreign investments recently and according to the policies, provided that a state-owned foreign firm wanted to invest in industries including mining, banking, communications and news & media in Mongolia and the stake it controlled exceeded 33 percent, the deal needed to win a nod from concerned Mongolian authorities only. And this might mean that the threshold for Chinese firms to invest in the Mongolian mining industry would be lower.

He stressed that the policies were quite different from those released last year and according to the latter, if a foreign firm wanted to invest in a Mongolian one engaged in industries including mining, banking, communications and news & media and the stake it held in the latter exceeded 49 percent and the injection exceeded about USD 60 million, the deal should be subject to the parliament by the government.

(USD 1 = CNY 6.09)

Source: www.nbd.com.cn