Mongolia to Offer Majority Stake in Planned Industrial Park

Mongolia hopes to bring factories, offices, technology and jobs to a corner of the Gobi Desert provided it can get investors for an industrial park envisioned next to a railway line that slices through the country and connects Russia and China.

The government approved a plan to sell 66 percent of the Sainshand Industrial Complex, Myagmarsuren Batgerel, director, department of restructuring and policy implementation in the State Property Committee, said today.

About $4 billion is needed to build infrastructure such as a power distribution network and a waste water facility, said Chuluunkhuu Ganbat, managing director of Liberty Partners, which is advising companies to invest in the park. Potential investments in the park, designed by civil engineering company Bechtel Group Inc. of the U.S., may exceed $10 billion, according to a Bechtel presentation seen by Bloomberg News.

“This industrial complex is going to help diversify the economy, bring technology, create jobs and provide more opportunities for Mongolia,” said Ganbat, a Columbia University-educated banker, who spent six years working for Germany’s Commerzbank AG on Wall Street.

Sainshand, a city of 20,000 people and 420 kilometers (261 miles) southeast of the capital Ulan Bator, may eventually house coking coal plants, a copper smelter and facilities to process food, make clothes, iron pellets and cement, he said.

Raising the $4 billion could take as many as five years and an investor presentation is scheduled for early April, Ganbat said, without providing names of interested parties.

Development Bank of Mongolia is considering lending 14.1 billion tugrik ($10 million) to cover engineering and environmental impact studies for the project, Chief Executive Officer Jan Jing Kim said in an interview this week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Kohn in Ulan Bator at mkohn5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Langan at plangan@bloomberg.net

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