Mongolia State Great Khural Resolution No. 62 — Minerals Licence Inspection Mandate and Royalty-Reform Directive

Mechanism

Resolution No. 62 is the parliamentary-mandate tier of Mongolia's 2024-25 minerals-governance overhaul. It was adopted by the State Great Khural following a Khural-commissioned audit of MRPAM's special-permit issuance, royalty collection, and tax-enforcement performance over 2018-2023.

The resolution tasks the Government of Mongolia with implementing sixteen specific directives across five clusters:

1. Legislative review and amendment The government is directed to evaluate existing mining laws — specifically the 2014 Minerals Law, the 2009 Strategic Deposits Law, and the Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement architecture — and submit proposed amendments by spring 2025, with particular attention to aligning benefit-sharing provisions with constitutional principles of citizens' collective ownership of natural resources.

2. Strategic-deposit revenue distribution The resolution mandates that benefits from strategic mineral deposits reach Mongolian citizens through restructured equity-distribution and royalty-sharing mechanisms. This is the political mandate behind the subsequent Erdenes Mongol vehicle reshaping and the Erdenes Critical Minerals SOE renaming (Resolution 95, February 2025).

3. Royalty methodology reform The audit found a MNT 1.1 trillion shortfall in uncollected mineral-extraction royalties. Resolution 62 directs reform of the companion-minerals royalty framework — the upstream mandate that subsequently drove the September 2025 MPE royalty-calculation shift, moving the royalty basis from fixed reference prices to actual Mining Product Exchange realised prices.

4. Illegal-mining enforcement The government and prosecutorial agencies are directed to strengthen inspection authority, increase criminal-liability provisions for illegal extraction, and investigate criminal conduct linked to fraudulent environmental assessments in small-scale mining operations (artisanal / ninja-miner activity).

5. Land conflict and cultural heritage resolution The resolution directs the government to investigate and resolve conflicts between mining-permit areas and private land ownership, and to protect cultural heritage sites that overlap with mining concession boundaries — a persistent flashpoint in the Gobi and Khentii regions.

Structural role in the Mongolia register

Resolution 62 is the missing "parent parliamentary mandate" tier in the Mongolia IPTM cluster. Prior filings cover executive-branch implementing instruments. Resolution 62 provides the constitutional-political driver for those instruments:

Downstream implications

• Oyu Tolgoi re-negotiation signal. The explicit mandate to review the OT Investment Agreement architecture signals that the Khural majority views the 2009-era terms as under-capturing state value — relevant to Rio Tinto's long-term operating environment.
• Royalty shortfall enforcement. The MNT 1.1 trillion audit finding creates political justification for aggressive back-collection; companies operating under the legacy benchmark-price royalty regime face retroactive exposure until the MPE-price regime is fully operational.
• Illegal mining crackdown. Strengthened criminal-liability provisions raise enforcement risk for the large informal artisanal-mining sector (estimated 60,000-100,000 operators) — historically a political sensitivity given rural livelihood dependence.
• Investment-climate signal. The review mandate for the 2014 Minerals Law and strategic-deposit cap (34% private ownership, enacted April 2024 in the SWF law companion amendments) signals continued upward pressure on state-ownership floors in new licence negotiations.

Open questions

• Whether the spring 2025 legislative-review deadline was met and which Minerals Law amendments were submitted in response.
• Scale of royalty back-collection actions against specific licensees following the MNT 1.1 trillion shortfall finding.
• Whether the OT Investment Agreement review produced any formal re-negotiation proposal — Rio Tinto has disclosed no material change to OT terms as of mid-2025.