A quote from Winston Churchill,"I content that for a nation to try to tax itsef into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

I have turned my back to Mongolia as a country to invest in. What is left of my former investment is already in another country. Investors need to be able to trust the leaders of a country. A tax like that will not not be forgotten even if it is removed. New confidence will take years even if the politicians are removed. Guess one endpoint is lost jobs.

I do not think the windfall tax will raise much revenue for the government since current exports are small relative to potential.
The increased tax will result in no foreign investment since it is too risky to explore when reward is so small.
Changes to the law need to be discussed in advance and policy objectives must be clear and transparent. This tax has all the earmarks of a hidden agenda and will win no friends in the mining community.

Mining will not bring good fortunes to Mongolia. It will only cause destruction of land and pollution. We already destroyed so much of our land after years of neglect. Talk about overgrazing of pastures, deforestation, desertification and sand dust storms. Large-scale (including open-pit) mining will only worsen the already fragile ecology of Mongolia. In fact many of our environmental problems are connected to mining. Erdenet is one example.

OK, how do you say the below in Mongolian?
"The Chinese province formerly known as Mongolia"
Thank your cowardly, greedy leaders for that one.
The only thing saving you, IMO, from this happening in weeks or months, is the Bejing Olumpics 2008. Get ready to teach your children Chinese and begin to always regret this sad day. Perhaps it will go down in history as a day of mourning.

Hey, thanks for update - this is very useful. how can i be sure that president has indeed signed the tax law? i would appreciate if anyone could send me a reliable link. thanx

I regret to announce that the wind-fall tax law has been signed and passed by the president N.Enkhbayar. Seems like this law is here to stay.

The President is very unlikely to veto the new law.

I do not think he will veto it. It will be a political suicide. However, I also do not think that the windfall tax will be fully exercised. You see, its valid only if the world price exceeds some threshold.

windfall tax is the step back and the main question arised as is Mongolian government really want to go forward or still has communist regeme policy when the government is a dictator without any transparency of its policy???

The deadline was supposed to be at 14:30 yesterday. Then it was pushed back until 17:00. After that it was said that today 16:00 is the dealine but I have also heard that it might even be next week because no-one in parlament understands the procedural around this...

will all foreign miners leave? The only miners left will be the Ninja miners who pay no tax at all

It was my understanding that the deadline has now passed. Is this true? This could be one of the most important decisions the president will ever make. You would think he would mention it to somebody.

If the gov't implements this tax, say good-bye to foreign investment AND any future trust in anything the gov't promises.

JT

As of now there is no news released on the windfall tax. Everybody is waiting eagerly on the outcome.

Did the president put is veto on the new windfall law?