Unfazed by a lower economic growth target, Mongolian Mining Corporation expects to continue to benefit from rising demand for coal this year.
'We remain optimistic on the demand from China,' MMC's chief executive Dr Battsengel Gotov said in Hong Kong yesterday.
This is because China is forecast to increase its annual steel production, which is dependent on coal, by 2 to 3 per cent to about 700 million tonnes this year, he said.
'[The predicted growth in the mainland's GDP of] 7.5 per cent is still a significant [level of] growth,' Gotov added.
MMC, the largest coking coal exporter in Mongolia, sold 3.3 million tonnes of raw hard coking coal and 1.5 million tonnes of washed hard coking coal to Chinese customers last year.
The Hong Kong-listed company said nearly all of Mongolia's 21.1 million tonnes of coal exports coal went to China last year, accounting for about 45 per cent of the mainland's total coal imports. With that, it surpassed Australia as the biggest coking coal exporter to China.
