March 9 (Reuters) – Mongolia is seeking to renegotiate the “unfair” commercial terms of mining giant Rio Tinto’s $18 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper \u200cmine, the Financial Times reported on Monday.<\/p>\n
Mongolia’s Prime Minister Gombojavyn Zandanshatar \u200cwarned Rio in a meeting on Monday that the current deal was “unfair,” adding that “this \u200bwhole situation feels like the Mongolian people and the parliament are being deceived”, the newspaper said, citing video footage it had seen.<\/p>\n
Zandanshatar and other government officials will meet Rio executives, including head of copper Katie Jackson, this \u200cweek to discuss the \u2060terms of the deal, the report said.<\/p>\n
Mongolia owns 34% of Oyu Tolgoi, one of the world’s largest-known copper and \u2060gold deposits, while Rio holds a 66% stake. The facility is Rio’s biggest copper growth project and began open-pit mining in 2011.<\/p>\n
Mongolia took a \u200bmultibillion-dollar loan \u200bfrom Rio Tinto at a floating \u200binterest rate that is currently \u200cover 11% to fund its share of the capital expenditure needed to develop the mine, the FT said.<\/p>\n
The government is proposing Rio reduce the interest rate on the loan to less than 6% and cut the annual management fee it charges for the project, the report said, adding \u200cthat Rio risks an increased rate \u200bof export tax if negotiations between the \u200bparties go poorly.<\/p>\n
Reuters could not \u200bimmediately verify the report. Rio Tinto did not immediately \u200crespond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
At \u200bpeak production Oyu \u200bTolgoi is expected to produce 500,000 metric tons of copper annually, according to its website.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Rio agreed to waive $2.4 billion in \u200bdebt owed to it \u200cby the government related to Oyu Tolgoi with both sides \u200bagreeing to “reset” their relationship.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Angela Christy and Gursimran Kaur \u200bin Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 9 (Reuters) – Mongolia is seeking to renegotiate the “unfair” commercial terms of mining giant Rio Tinto’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20718],"tags":[21842,21843,21844,21841,21022,12991],"class_list":["post-43110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rio-tinto","tag-commercial-terms","tag-gombojavyn-zandanshatar","tag-katie-jackson","tag-mongolia","tag-oyu-tolgoi","tag-rio-tinto"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116610234267975607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}