Yesterday, the IMF announced it had received a communiqué from the Mongolian government making an official request for support for their ailing economy, which has seen foreign direct investment plunge some 70% in the past year and a government reconsidering austerity measures versus development of potentially lucrative international mining projects. Mongolia has already received an IMF bailout loan back in 2009 due to the impact of the global financial crisis, which the country was able to pay off riding the wave of revenue enhancement from the commodity prices boom of the last few years.

The IMF may reconsider loaning to Mongolia again after such a short amount of time, especially given the uncertain fate of the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine and the Tavan Tolgoi coking coal deposit. The Mongolian government, despite having raised a fair amount of money through the sale of some $2 billion in bonds in both dollars and yen, yields skyrocketed follow the news of the last quarter of 2014, but fell again upon news of the IMF’s decision to entertain the idea of a second bailout loan.

However, another related development may help the Mongolian government’s case. The latest referendum, held by text message, rejected austerity in favor of mining investment, which may help loosen the impasse over the Oyu Tolgoi mine and developer Rio Tinto group.

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News Briefs:

• Ukraine has hired Lazard Asset Management in order to renegotiate its debt with the Eurozone, to which it owes some $20 billion, and is absolutely critical both at the crucial time for the Eurozone in the midst of another Greek debt crisis and Ukraine’s own civil war. Ukraine, according to an analyst quoted by the WSJ article, will most likely need to force an extension on the maturities for its bonds without a “haircut” on their value (arbitrarily reducing the total value of the debt held in the bond).

• President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed a law making it easier to shut down media outlets with foreign financing. The new law states that any outlet with foreign funding found guilty of “defamation” twice in a year can be shut down by a court. The legislation was approved by Parliament on December 16, and finally signed into law by the President on February 3.

• In an address televised to the nation, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko announced that he anticipates the delivery of lethal Western military aid after frustration in the cessation of peace talks over the weekend. Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said that US officials will announce something “on top of what has already been given to Ukraine.” He did not indicate if this meant lethal or nonlethal aid.

• Officials in the Uzbek intelligence service, or SNB, have reported their concerns that local cells of the Islamic State are planning attacks in the spring of 2015. They reported their concerns on the basis of the testimony of a captured member of a local IS group – however there are several reasons to doubt the story. For one, the story was first reported by Central Asia Online, which, according to Radio Free Liberty Europe, is sponsored indirectly through funds of the US Central Command.

• An exodus of foreigners from Russia has been attributed to the economic slowdown and the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. The most significant drop was from the US, which was down by 36%, and the UK by 38% and Spain by 41%. Migrant laborers from Uzbekistan also fled the country in droves during the same period.