Indian Home Minister to Witness Ground Breaking of Mongolia's First Oil Refinery

13:19 GMT, 20 June 2018

India has provided a $700 million loan for the oil refinery and $264 million for pipelines. The loan was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the country in 2015. The 20-year loan will have an interest rate of 1.75% and principal payments will be waived during the first five years.

Sputnik

New Delhi (Sputnik) — India's Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh is visiting Mongolia to attend the ground breaking ceremony of the landlocked nation's first oil refinery in its southeastern Dornogovi Province.

Government officials told Sputnik that Singh will leave for Ulaanbaatar on Thursday and attend the ceremony along with Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Hurelsukh on June 22 in Altanshiree soum of Dornogovi province.

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The refinery will have a processing capacity of 1.5 million metric tons of oil per year and will annually produce 560,000 tons of gasoline and 670,000 tons of diesel, as well as 107,000 tons of liquefied natural gas. The refinery could boost Mongolia's gross domestic product by 10 percent. Currently, Mongolia exports crude oil to China while importing petroleum products from the Russian Federation.

Other than his meeting with the Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga, the Indian home minister will also hold a meeting with his counterpart and Mongolia's minister of justice and internal affairs on June 23. He will also visit the headquarters of Mongolia's Border Protection Force before returning to New Delhi on June 24.

India was the first country outside the then-Socialist Bloc to establish diplomatic ties with Mongolia in 1955. India had also supported Mongolia in getting United Nations and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) berths.