SOME ISSUES ON MONGOLIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Infrastructure of a country, especially energy and road transport development, is a measure of the country's economic development and its competitiveness with other countries. Although Mongolia is rich in natural resources, due to weak infrastructure development, the issue on exporting those resources to international market is still deficient.

Currently, Mongolia has a total length of 1842 km railway with width of 1520mm. It operates in 5 direction with 63 stations nationwide. Due to rise in volume of rail freight in Mongolia, the load of the central railway in our country is increasing. In particular, in the first 6 months of 2019, 13.2 million tons of freight was carried which is an 8% increase over the previous year. In the same period, transportation revenue reached 335.6 billion MNT, an increase of 38.2% from the same period of last year. Thereupon, there is a need to develop the rail transport sector evenly.

The State Great Hural (Parliament) drafted and approved the "State Railway Transport Policy" in June 2010. The policy is expected to implement the new projects in Mongolia by three periods.

This includes "Tavantolgoi-Sainshand". "Sainshand-Khuut", "Khuut-Choibalsan", "Khuut-Bichigt", "Tavantolgoi-Gashuunsukhait", "Nariin Sukhait-Shiveekhuren" and "Khuut-Tamsagbulag-Numrug" projects and future western railway projects sites incidentally with regional development policies.

In addition to these projects, projects and programs, such as the "Tianjin Transportation Logistics Project" and "UBTZ", have been implemented in the railway sector as a long-term development program until 2030. If these projects and programs are successful, the load on the central railway will decrease. Furthermore, the international and regional projects, such as  “Belt & Road”, ‘The trilateral economic corridor”, are important for attracting foreign exchange flows and increasing the economic benefits of the railway sector.

Mongolia's power system consists of five central power generating units: the Central Energy System, the Western Energy System, the Altai-Uliastai Energy System, the Eastern Energy System and the Southern Region Power Supply. There are 9 thermal power plants, Durgun and Taishir hydroelectric power plant, Tsogttsetsii, Salkhit, Altai, Uliastai diesel generators and low-powered renewable energy sources. At the same time, the Ukhaa Khudag power plant and Oyu Tolgoi are utilizing diesel power plants as reservoir and if necessary imports electricity from Russia and China.

Consumption of central region of Mongolia is likely to be in restricted regime due to the increase of 70-100 MW per year. The planned renovations at the thermal power plants will not be able to solve these shortcomings, so there is a need to create new sources within Mongolia's energy policy.

The Government of Mongolia approved a resolution 325 the "National medium-term program to implement energy policy (2018-2023)". According to this program, big projects will be implemented such as: 250 MW extension and renovation of the  "Thermal Power Plant 3", "Baganuur Power Plant with capacity of 700 MW" project, , "Buuruljuut TPP" 300 MW power plant project, 5280 MW electicity power plant bsed on the brown coal deposit of th “Shivee Ovoo”, "Erdeneburen's 60-100 MW hydroelectricity project" and "Egiin hydropower plant with capacity of 315 MW".

The programs included in the policy document have the advantage of being implemented to limit the growing electricity and energy consumption, as well as the consumption of imported energy and bring economic benefits.

POSTED: 2019-10-24