As local information agency BelTA reports, the increase in the gold and foreign exchange reserves was facilitated by the second tranche of the EurAsEC Anticrisis Fund loan to the tune of US$440 million and the transfer of part of the syndicated loan provided to OAO Belaruskali by Sberbank of Russia and the Eurasian Development Bank.

Belarusian gold and foreign exchange reserves rose over the New Year to US$7.9 billion due in part to the US$2.5 billion paid by Russia’s Gazprom for control of pipeline operator Beltransgaz, Reuters reports.

The conditions of a Russia-led rescue loan stipulated that Belarus must sell state-owned assets in order to free up cash. Gas monopoly Gazprom said in November it would buy the 50 percent of Beltransgaz it did not already own for US$2.5 billion.

The country’s central bank National Bank of Belarus (NBB) said reserves had grown as a result of the sale to US$7.915 billion from US$7.355 billion in early December.

Last year, the severe financial crisis devalued the Belarusian ruble and sent inflation spiraling by more than 100 percent.

The monetary policy guidelines are aimed at limiting inflation, while the Belarusian ruble’s exchange rate is to be set by market forces with minimal intervention from the NBB.

The NBB promised that it would carry out only limited interventions for curbing drastic fluctuations of the ruble’s exchange rate.

Earlier, the NBB said gold and foreign exchange reserves are expected to total US$6.1 billion to US$7 billion at the end of 2012.

“Keeping the reserves at a level sufficient for the economic security of Belarus and ensuring timely settlement of foreign and domestic obligations in foreign currency in full are priority tasks of the government and the National Bank,” central bank official said to BelTA.

The NBB said that its base refinance rate would be reduced to 20-23 percent towards the end of 2012.

Negotiations on the post-Soviet republic’s WTO accession have been on-going for more than 14 years. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the country applied for membership in the WTO in April 1996 and circulated its Memorandum on the Foreign Trade Regime in 1996. Kazakhstan’s Working Party met for the first time in March 1997.

In June 2009, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus decided to try and join the WTO as a single customs territory. Several months later, however, they announced that they would abandon that strategy to again apply as individual countries. WTO officials had indicated that the collective-entry strategy could significantly delay the accession process.

Astana subsequently announced plans to enter the WTO by the end of 2010, but later had to scrap its plans. Earlier this year, Kazkahstan’s cabinet announced that accession into the WTO is one of its priorities for 2011.

In late May, 2011, Zhanar Aitzhanova, the country’s top WTO negotiator, who also serves as minister of economic development and trade said that Kazakhstan officials are now working on finalizing the technical details of its bid.

“While there are some remaining issues like agriculture subsidies and livestock sanitation regulations to be worked out, on major issues we don’t have problems,” she said at a news conference at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington.

The protocol on the completion of the bilateral negotiations between the United States and Kazakhstan on Astana’s accession to the WTO was signed on September 21 by the two countries’ governments in Washington.

The signing of the protocol was preceded by technical consultations on the issue of access of U.S. service providers to the Kazakh market. This was one of the key conditions for Kazakhstan’s accession to the WTO.

Of particular interest were the issues of supply of services for companies engaged in the production of oil and natural gas, telecommunications, construction, cross-border and financial services.

According to the minister of economic development and trade, “the reached agreements will create a more favorable climate and stimulate additional investment in the above-mentioned sectors of services, mainly in the processing and creation of new industries in Kazakhstan.” The United States is a key investor in Kazakhstan with foreign direct investment into the republic from 1993 to 2011 amounting to US$40 billion.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Karim Massimov on September 5, was published in the national press last Saturday, September 17. The new export duty rates will come into force from September 27.

According to the decree, the new export duty rate for light petroleum products will be US$143.54 per ton (the current rate is US$114.05 per ton), with the rate for heavy petroleum products standing at US$95.69 per ton (the current rate is US$76.03 per ton).

Export duties on crude oil, which have been reintroduced last year at US$20 per ton, before doubling the tariff to US$40 from January 1, 2011, will remain at the same level.

The cabinet expects to raise KZT421.40 billion (around US$2.8 billion) from introducing the new exports duty by the end of the 2011, the Ministry of Finance has said.

The state budget revenues paid in the form of export duty on crude oil made up US$1.67 billion for the first half of 2011, Vice Finance Minister Ruslan Dalenov wrote in his Twitter account July 22.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan had introduced the export duty on crude in May 2008 at the height of the Global Financial Crisis, but reduced them to zero in January 2009 after crude prices plunged.

Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, has doubled crude output over the past decade to become the second-biggest oil producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia. It produced 79.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate in 2010, 4.2 percent up against 2009.

Foreign oil companies control a significant proportion of crude production in Kazakhstan, which holds slightly more than 3 percent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves.

The Chevron-led Tengizchevroil venture is the country’s largest oil producer, while Chinese companies control nearly a quarter of output.

Currently Kazakhstan is facing fuel shortages and fuel price hikes, tengerinews.kz reports. The Oil and Gas Ministry along with the State Agency for Monopolies Control have repeatedly stated that measures will be taken to stabilize the fuel market.

According to the Oil and Gas Ministry estimation, the national oil production output in 2011 will make up 81 million tons, growing to 83 million tons in 2012-2013, to 85 million tons in 2014 and to 95 million tons by 2015.

According to the stats, crude and condensed gas production output for the first seven months of 2011 totaled 46.6 million tons.

The bill, approved early Friday, is designed to overhaul Ukraine’s Soviet-era pension system as the government seeks to slash spending in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.

Ukraine’s parliament approved a government bill on pension reform at first reading on June 16.

The parliament discussed amendments to the document all night (consideration of the bill lasted 8.5 hours) before passing the final text in the early hours of Friday. It is expected to be signed into law soon by President Viktor Yanukovych.

The bill, which will enter into force on September 1, would gradually raise the retirement age for women from 55 to 60 years and increase by 10 years the period when workers make salary contributions to their retirement funds. The retirement age of male civil servants men was raised to 63 years.

The adopted bill stipulates the maximum pension cannot exceed 10 times the living wage, which is currently around US$95 a week. Previously, the maximum amount was 12 time.

The bill also decreases from 90 percent to 80 percent the wage for calculating pensions for civil servants. The maximum pension is limited to 10 minimum incomes (some US$1,000 at present).

The Ukrainian government put forward a draft pension reform bill parliament last year in a bid to overcome the Pension Fund’s growing annual deficit and to meet IMF requirements. But its passage has been postponed several times.

As a result the IMF froze funding this year because of the failure to pass the bill, and the government hopes the aid will resume once the law is passed. The bill now awaits presidential approval to become law.

“If the parliament will vote for the pension reform, in early August we can get the decision of the IMF Board of Directors,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policies Sergei Tigipko said to reporters.

Tigipko suggested that the two tranches of the IMF might be combined. “We might be able to obtain two tranches simultaneously – about US$3 billion, which will be added to the foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank.”

According to official data, Ukraine has the world’s largest share of spending on pensions – 18 percent of GDP in 2010. Moreover, one of the highest levels of pension contributions in Europe, representing 35 percent of gross salary. In addition, despite that in 2010 an amount equivalent to 7 percent of GDP was transferred from the budget to the pension fund.

Martin Raiser, World Bank Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova assures that once the bill is be signed by the Ukrainian president to come into force, it will allow annual savings on pension costs amounting to about 1.5 percent of GDP starting 2012. And till 2015 Pension Fund deficit budget financing will disappear.

According to the survey, conducted by the Gorshenin Institute on June 11-13 2011, 52.3 percent of interviewed respondents living in Ukraine’s regional centers, cities, towns and villages, including Kiev and Sevastopol, agree that the pension reform is definitely necessary.

At the same time, only 6.7 percent of respondents are taking some actions to ensure their financial security upon retirement, while 68.3 percent of respondents, as it was in Soviet time, are “doing nothing and count on a state pension.”

Foreign direct investment in Georgia fell 16 percent in 2010 year on year to US$553 million, official data shows, well below the US$1 billion target already set for last year. Nevertheless, FDI still accounted for 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.

The decline in FDI is officially attributed to the ongoing impact of the global recession; however, investors are also cautious due to the political climate and Russia’s military build-up in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which slashed foreign investment.

Kobalia said recent improvements in the country’s sovereign ratings outlook should help restore investors’ confidence. Ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch both raised their outlook for Georgia to “positive” in March.

Georgia placed a US$500 million 10-year Eurobond last month with a coupon rate of 6.79 percent and tendered to buy back US$416.7 million worth of its outstanding US$500 million 2013 Eurobond via an “any and all” tender ahead of a new issue.

The International Monetary Fund, which forecasts economic growth of 5.5 percent in Georgia this year versus 6.4 percent in 2010, has said the Eurobond issue should help spur greater FDI.

Kobalia highlighted tourism and hydroelectric power among the most attractive sectors for foreign investors. She said Georgia was using only 18 percent of the hydropower that it generates and was exporting the rest to neighboring countries.

“Turkey, our neighbor, has a deficit already so it’s a great investment for companies to build hydropower plants and to transfer electricity to Turkey,” she said.

Georgia was also offering investors a 15-year tax break on investments in two tourism sites in the Black Sea, she said.

Earlier this March, American real estate mogul Donald Trump announced his plan to invest US$250 million in the construction of two 40-storey skyscrapers in the country — the Trump Tower in the capital Tbilisi and the residential Trump Riviera, in the resort town of Batumi.

Meanwhile, Georgian media reports that remittances from migrants back to Georgia now exceed FDI flows. This can be seeing as a troubling fact for the government and for President Mikhail Saakashvili’s high-profile campaign to attract outside investment, Menas Associates Blog speculates.

Annual inflation hit 13.7 percent in February, continuing a trend of rapidly rising prices: year-on-year inflation has climbed almost 1 percent every month since October, and has soared since June 2010 figure of 3.7 percent.

Most concerning for Georgian politicians are the fact that food and soft beverages is the biggest contributor to inflation, making up almost all of the 2.8 percent jump from January’s figures. Taken alone, inflation on these products is running at 28.4 percent. The social and political impact of such a sharp rise in food prices is potentially very serious indeed.

The government responded by distributing one-off food vouchers of around US$17 to poor households. Although these might be effective at alleviating immediate concerns, economists have warned that in the long term these could distort the economy and actually contribute to galloping inflation.

Some observers are skeptical of FDI flows doubling this year, saying that Donald Trump’s expansion into Georgia may not be enough to start a new wave of foreign investment.

Japan’s recent nuclear disaster is not seen to have a lasting impact on the global nuclear industry, he said.

“We don’t think it’s a big problem for the industry as a whole. It’s a little bit of set-back in time frame, but as a whole it will go on” Gombo said. “We want green development and nuclear is the number one choice.”

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mongolia with its proven uranium reserves of about 80,000 tons ranks 16th in the world in reserves of uranium resources and 6th in the Asian continent following Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, and India.

The country untested reserves may raise the estimate to 1.39 million tons, constituting the largest reserves in the world.

However, currently most of the energy in Mongolia is still generated from coal.

Coal provides 80 percent of its electricity (3 billion kWh in 2009), from less than 1 GWe capacity, and 13 percent of electricity is imported from Russia. Air pollution is a major problem in Ulaanbaatar, from domestic combustion, cars, and power generation.

“We have the ambition to build the capability of nuclear energy in Mongolia, and the ambition to supply nuclear power plants in Northeast Asia with nuclear fuel,” Gombo told reporters on the sidelines of a mining conference in Singapore.

He said the country is seeking investment from around the globe to develop its nuclear energy sector, adding that uranium reserves in the country could rise to above 1 million tons.

“Currently there is not much, but we expect there will be huge investment in Mongolia’s nuclear energy sector, because the super powers are interested,” said Gombo, adding that the United States, Russia and China are competing with each other to get into the country’s nuclear sector.

While Mongolian-Russian joint ventures are currently gaining much attention, sandwiched between China and Russian Mongolia is rightfully diversifying investment partners in its nuclear industry sector to avoid over reliance on any single party.

“The government is quite selective, and is opting to cooperate with the most developed countries in the industry, like the United States, Japan and France,” he said, while adding that it is not like Mongolia doesn’t want to deal with China and Russia, “but we want a balance of interest.”

Meanwhile, Atomredmetzoloto, the mining arm of Russian state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom, says that Russia spent the equivalent of US$600 million on uranium exploration and development in Mongolia to 1995.

In December 2011, Bayarbayasgalan, head of the Nuclear Materials department of the Mongolian Nuclear Energy Agency, told the government-run news agency Montsame that about 20 companies, most of which are international, are now exploring for uranium in Mongolian territory.

According to France’s Areva website, Mongolia and France’s governments signed an agreement to let the company to explore and mine uranium in Mongolia last October.

In September 2009 India also signed a uranium supply and nuclear cooperation agreement with Mongolia. Electricity demand in India is increasing rapidly, and the 830 billion kilowatt hours produced in 2008 was triple the 1990 output, though still represented only some 700 kWh per capita for the year. The country plans to increase its nuclear energy production from 3,667 Mwe to 20,000 Mwe by 2020 and 63,000 Mwe by 2032, which will comprise 25 percent of total electricity production.

The Mongolian government has played a leading role in all nuclear-related efforts. And experts’ considers this trend will continue in the near future.

The new Mongolian Nuclear Energy Law (d/d July 2009), gives government the right to take ownership without payment of not less than 51 percent stake in developments explored with state monies, and not less than 34 percent stake in independently explored sites.

According to Richard Stratford, who directs the State Department’s Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security Office, U.S. Energy Department’s officials and their counterparts in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, are in the early stages of discussion.

Speaking at the biennial Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, Stratford said a spent-fuel depot in the region could be of particular value to Taiwan and South Korea, which use nuclear power but have few options when it comes to disposing atomic waste.

“My Taiwan and South Korean colleagues have a really difficult time with spent fuel. And if there really was an international storage depot, which I have always supported, then that would help to solve their problem.”

The United States provides fresh uranium rods to selected trade partners in Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan. For Mongolia to accept and store U.S.-origin spent fuel from these or other nations would require Washington to first negotiate a nuclear trade agreement with Ulaanbaatar.

Although Energy Department officials have reportedly engaged in informal talks with Mongolian representatives for several months, Stratford has not yet had any contact with Ulaanbaatar on the matter, he said. It is not yet certain whether formal negotiations on a nuclear trade pact will move forward.

Energy Department officials traveled to Mongolia last fall for meetings on the matter, according to Mark Hibbs, a senior associate with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He chaired the discussion on nuclear cooperation.

“It was a fruitful discussion,” Hibbs told GSN yesterday. “They went into some details [but] it was very exploratory.”

Mongolia could seek to step up mining of its natural uranium deposits and potentially expand into a wider array of services, such as providing foreign nations with fresh fuel and then taking back the atomic waste at a later date, nationaljournal.com speculates.

This type of move would come at a time when neither Russia nor China has acted on similar concepts for what is termed “leasing” of nuclear material.

“I think these guys are fooling themselves [if they] believe we will put a spent-fuel depot in Mongolia,” nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis told GSN in a brief interview, noting surprise at Stratford’s remarks. “I don’t think Mongolia is going to accept being a regional spent-fuel repository.”

Mongolia has a long history of uranium exploration commencing with joint Russian and Mongolian endeavors from 1950s involving investment of some US$200 million. Initial success was obtained in Dornod and Gurvanbulag regions of northeastern Mongolia where uranium is present in volcanogenic sediments.

Mongolia joined the IAEA in 1993, though it has applied safeguards under the NPT since 1972. A law on nuclear weapons-free status was passed in 2000. The Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement with IAEA has been in force since May 2003.

The country’s Nuclear Energy Agency has tentative plans for developing nuclear power, using either Korean Smart reactors or Toshiba 4S types, from 2021. Three sites under consideration are Ulaanbaatar, western Mongolia and Dornod province.

According to the Prime Minister S. Batbold, Mongolia plans to commence uranium exploration by the year of 2012 with uranium selling beginning from 2013 or 2014.

“Mongolia has nearly 1 million tons in reasonably assured reserve of uranium and we need to speed up the production,” he said earlier this January.

According to the Steel Authority of India Ltd., the company aims to buy one mine itself and another through a venture with other state-run metal and energy companies.

Mongolia, holding the world’s largest deposit of steelmaking raw material, is seeking developers to help it feed demand for raw materials from its neighbors, while maintaining control over the deposits. The Tavan Tolgoi region holds more than 6 billion metric tons of coal in the deserts of southern Mongolia.

The state-run Steel Authority Chairman C.S. Verma told reporters that the company asked the Indian government for bi-lateral assistance for the mines, without giving details about the size, location or time of investment.

International Coal Ventures Ltd., in which Steel Authority holds a 26 percent stake, has bid for a Mongolian block estimated to hold 1 billion tons of coal, Steel Secretary P.K. Misra said earlier. As much as 70 percent of the deposit may be coking coal, he said.

India’s biggest steelmakers Tata Steel Ltd., Steel Authority and JSW Steel Ltd. are seeking mines overseas following a surge in the price of coking coal, Bloomberg reports.

Steel Authority, which imports about 70 percent of its requirement, is paying 66 percent more for the fuel this financial year than last year, based on the benchmark prices. The company’s products include pig iron, steel ingots, liquid steel, alloy steel, special steel, stainless steel, ferro alloys, etc.

According to the Eurasia Capital “Mongolia Outlook 2011,” the country produced an impressive performance in 2010, leading globally as the best equity market, second fastest growing economy and the second best performing currency.

Experts expect the Mongolian economy to grow up to 10 percent in 2011 (or 33 percent in US$ terms due to further estimated appreciation of the MNT against the US$) and may continue outperforming, ranking among the top three fastest growing economies.

The primary growth drivers for 2011 will be the US$2.3 billion capital budget (over one-third of Mongolia’s 2010 GDP) allocated by Canadian Ivanhoe Mines and British-Australian Rio Tinto for Oyu Tolgoi, growing investments across the mining sector, the positive outlook for commodity prices, rising export values driven by strong Chinese demand and growth in personal income underpinned by inflows of foreign capital and the expansion in government social payments.

Possible IPOs by leading Mongolian companies and the planned continued privatization of state-owned enterprises over 2011 and beyond will further support Mongolia Stock Exchange performance in 2011.

The report says, the Mongolian currency may appreciate another impressive +10 percent, reaching MNT1,130 per US$ in 2011.

More than 150 investment banks from Wall Street, Europe and Asia-Pacific made pitches to the Mongolian government over the past few days to win the coveted underwriting mandate for the Tavan Tolgoi coal mine. Sources said a decision is expected within two weeks.

According to the pitching process participants, the size of the offering could vary from US$1.5 billion to US$5 billion, depending on timing.

Tavan Tolgoi is located in the South Gobi desert 400 kilometers from the nearest railway line and lacks infrastructure and power, its estimated reserves amount to 6-6.5 billion tons.

No one can be considered in prime position to win the mandate yet. Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, and ING as well as Goldman Sachs, UBS and Deutsche Bank are among the groups in the running.

Dealmakers reckon the government may end up mandating as many as five or six banks for the IPO, The Financial Times speculates.

Some suggest that JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank are in a good position, since both banks were hired by the Mongolian government for its original plan – now scrapped – to sell 49 percent of the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit to a foreign bidder. JPMorgan and Citigroup can also tout the fact that they arranged the Hong Kong IPO of Mongolia Mining Corp. last October.

MMC, Mongolia’s largest privately held producer of coking coal, rose about US$700 million in the deal.

Mongolia sits on vast quantities of untapped mineral wealth. Analysts say it could be one of the fastest growing economies of the next decade, as well as a key investment target for global mining giants.

Mining accounted for over 60 percent of total FDI in the country last year.

Coking coal is in great demand in neighboring China, as well as other big Asian buyers such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

The government plans to keep 51 percent of Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi stake.

“Ten percent of the shares will be given to every citizen of Mongolia,” Algar Namgar, executive director of the Mongolian National Mining Association, told Reuters. “And 10 percent of the shares will be traded to every Mongolian enterprise.”

Global coal prices have shot up in recent months due to disruptions in several coal-producing countries, including Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, while demand in Asia, particularly China and India, continues to grow.

The price of Australian thermal coal, a benchmark for Asia, has risen 34 percent from a year ago to around US$127 a ton while spot prices for coking coal used by steelmakers have shot up more than 50 percent from a year ago to hover around US$370 a ton.

The new amendment to the Latvian Law on Immigration came into force in July, 1, and allows foreign investors and their family members including those from non-EU countries to receive a 5-year residence permit in Latvia along with the right to travel in the Schengen area freely, if they purchase Latvian property of at least 70,000 euros (US$95,000) in value, or invest in a business.

“The meaning of the amendments is to encourage investment in Latvia, to attract investors. We wanted to make sure that people who in one form or another contribute to the economic development of our country have more opportunities to obtain a residence permit,” Boris Tsilevich, deputy of the Saeima (Parliament) of Latvia explained to local press.

The volume of investment in one of Latvia’s companies has to be at least 36,000 euros. The minimum amount of paid corporate taxes has to amount to 28,000 euros per year.

Although the law does not give investors the right to work anywhere within the European Union, they can still enjoy the freedom of movement within all 25 EU countries in the Schengen zone.

Before the amendments, the foreigner could actually get a temporary residence permit in three cases: if he/she learns in Latvia, running (in which case the employer had to justify why he needs a foreign worker), and for family reunification purposes.

Since the law was introduced in July, it has already given the property market a boost. “In essence the whole initiative restarted the real estate market in Latvia,” apartment building owner Kristaps Kristopans said to the BBC.

“One year ago it was completely dead. No transactions. Nothing. And now a lot has changed. Sales are picking up nicely.” According to him, almost all his buyers are Russians who have been attracted by the Latvian residency permit offer.

According to Latvia’s immigration authorities, more than 100 foreigners have already applied for the rights after purchasing property or investing in business in Latvia — all of them from the former Soviet Union.

Robert Zile, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, agrees with the opponents of the new law and says the influx of Russian investments will increase Moscow’s influence in the country.

Along with other protesters, members of the Latvian National Party think the incentive to foreign buyers will inevitably increase prices, making real estate unaffordable for locals.

“The government is trying to sell our country. They do not bother to think how to bring back Latvians who left the country,” said Hardis Paradnieks, one of those opposed to the new law.

In response to fears, the government says that all applicants are thoroughly checked out before being awarded residency rights, and forbids cash payments to prevent money laundering.

In addition to their contribution to Latvia’s economy, foreign investors as well as other categories of residence seekers must pass an examination on Latvian language. “Actually it is the exam to the lowest category, i.e. candidate for permanent residence must speak the language to a bare minimum,” said Tsilevich.

Meanwhile, the local banks are offering the useful assistance to their new customers, who’ve been provided the possibility to conclude deposit placement agreement within one day without requiring coming in to Riga.