Mongolia
Mongolia's fuel headquarters counts 19,853 tonnes of petrol in September's first week and queues of 105 cars in Bayan-Ulgii
The emergency headquarters on fuel supply reported on Tuesday that 19,853 tonnes of AI-92 crossed the border in the first week of September, and ordered more fuel into five aimags where the average queue at a station runs 85 to 105 vehicles, against 54 elsewhere.
Mongolia's premier reaches into the coal company's profit for the pension rise, and the auditor puts the deficit at 2% of GDP
Nyam-Osoryn Uchral said on Monday, as the State Great Khural's extraordinary session opened on the budget amendment, that this year's pension and wage increases will be paid with ₮1.5 trillion ($417 million) taken from Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi as a dividend, through an amendment to the law that keeps state companies' dividends out of the budget. On Tuesday the general auditor told the same chamber that the package adds ₮998 billion of spending with no new revenue and fails the fiscal rule's primary-balance test.
On the map in your pocket, Russia is 10 Central Asias. On the ground it is 4.3
The UN General Assembly voted on Friday to push the world's maps away from Mercator, for Africa's sake. CAW ran the same arithmetic across Eurasia: the standard web map hands Russia a latitude premium that doubles its visual weight against Central Asia, and hands Central Asia a premium of its own against every neighbour to its south and east. Correcting the map takes the northern half of that bargain away.
Mongolia's parliament opens a budget rewrite that turns a 57% export jump into pensions and pay rises
The State Great Khural opened its extraordinary session at 10:02 on Monday with 64.3% of its members in the hall and one package before it: the amendment to the 2026 budget that the government submitted on 20 August. In the parliament's own summary the case is four numbers. The economy grew 7.6% over seven months, exports reached $12 billion, up 57%, and the government wants ₮250,000 ($70) a month more for 435,000 pensioners and 20 to 50% more for 149,000 state employees. Both increases are permanent. Both begin in the year's last two months, and the full bill arrives in 2027, the year the government's own draft budget suspends the spending cap.
Mongolia's premier hears Moscow's fuel pledge in Vladivostok while 165 rural stations run below normal
Nyam-Osoryn Uchral met Russia's energy minister Sergei Tsivilev at the Eastern Economic Forum and heard that Russia keeps Mongolia's supply stable under their intergovernmental agreements despite its export restrictions, Montsame reported on Thursday. At home, the ministry's own count says 200 of 365 rural stations were working normally on 30 August.
Mongolia's parliament returns on 7 September to rewrite this year's budget
The Speaker's Council called an extraordinary session of the State Great Khural for 7 to 14 September with one item on it: the amendment to the 2026 budget. The 2027 draft filed on 31 August, the one that suspends the spending rule, is not on the list.
Ulaanbaatar's 2027 budget suspends its own spending rule for a year
The government sent parliament a 2027 budget on Monday with 41.3 trillion tugriks of revenue, 43.6 trillion of spending and a 2.3 trillion deficit, and asked to switch off the spending ceiling of the Fiscal Stability Law for the year. The exemption is justified by one-off money: state-company and Oyu Tolgoi dividends, domestic securities and last year's carry-overs.
Xi promises Mongolia fuel as its August petrol book closes 8.4% short
Xi Jinping affirmed in Bishkek that China will keep supplying Mongolia with petroleum products through the market's instability. At home, the prime minister's task force closed August with petrol arrivals 8.4% short of orders, and diesel delivered in full.
Mongolia's fuel queues thin out, by the ministry's own count
The industry ministry counted 58 cars per station on 31 August against 70 to 75 a week earlier, and credited the taskforce running the crisis. The tonnage ledger that would prove a turn is kept separately, and its August petrol line ran a third short at the last public accounting.
The rule leaves, the money stays
COP17 closed with $1.3 billion in restoration and drought finance and no drought framework. The instrument fight moves to Egypt in 2028, and Central Asia spends the pause competing for discretionary money it helped argue into existence.
Ulaanbaatar closes the drought books at $1.3 billion
COP17 closed at the end of last week with a $1.3 billion restoration and drought portfolio for 23 countries, while the decision on a global drought regime travels on to Egypt.
Ulaanbaatar takes back 407 pieces of its greenbelt
The governor of Mongolia's capital revoked land rights on 407 plots in the forested belt around Ulaanbaatar, out of 11,706 granted there, after inspections of 26 summer-cottage zones, the state agency Montsame reported on Friday.
Mongolia's August petrol book runs a third short of its orders
Mongolia has received 51,000 of the 74,780 tons of AI-92 it contracted for August, industry ministry state secretary Buriad Dashpurev said on Thursday, with about 23,000 tons more expected before month-end; diesel stands at 130,000 of 158,650 tons.
The drought rule leaves Ulaanbaatar for Egypt
The fight that defined the desertification summit's second week ends without an instrument: negotiators reached what the talks' rapporteurs called a delicate agreement to carry the drought question to COP18, and the closing plenary was set to adopt the package on Friday afternoon in Ulaanbaatar.
The ADB puts $400 million behind the region's border queues
The Asian Development Bank approved on Thursday a $400 million regional facility, BUILD, to modernise border crossings across the 11 CAREC countries, with up to $50 million per project over 10 years. The priority projects named so far are Tajik: Fotehobod-Oybek on the Uzbek border, Sarazm and Navbunyod.
The queue with a warehouse address
Mongolia's regulator says part of August's fuel shortage sat in storage. Fifty years ago America asked the same question, and took eight years to stop asking.
Mongolia opens an artificial-shortage case against a fuel retailer
The Anti-Monopoly Office is investigating Sod Mongol Group over petrol held in storage while 7 of its stations stood closed. Its citation has a statutory name: an artificial shortage created by misleading consumers.
The region's fuel backstops harden into the supply plan
Ukraine's drones stopped Lukoil's NORSI refinery on Wednesday, and Reuters counted the wider score: every big Lukoil plant in Russia now stands idle. For Central Asia's importers, the hedges assembled this summer, Chinese contracts, an Iranian request, third-country cargoes inside a Russian commitment, now read as the base case.
The US draws its red line as Egypt takes the next COP
Two days before the drought conference closes in Ulaanbaatar, Washington says it will accept no drought instrument at all, and the incoming host wants a legally binding one.
At the drought conference, the money moves and the rule does not
The UN desertification conference in Ulaanbaatar marked its Water Day on 25 August. The Asian Development Bank announced a target the same day: at least $2 billion by 2035 for land restoration across Asia and the Pacific. The one text at that conference that would bind anybody, a drought regime, is deadlocked with three days left.