Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

speakup

VANCOUVER - Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (TSX:IVN) shares were up 9.2 per cent at midday on Monday after early vote counts suggested Mongolia's pro-development ruling party will gain a parliamentary majority and remove a hurdle to construction of a huge copper mine.

The Vancouver-headquartered company, which is trying to develop the Oyu Tolgoi copper project in Mongolia with its partner Rio Tinto PLC. However, their efforts have been complicated by uncertainty over whether they will receive final approvals.

Ivanhoe shares gained 93 cents to $11.04 at the Toronto Stock Exchange at noon, down from an earlier intraday high of $11.15. That's the highest since the stock soared 16 per cent on June 5 to close at $11.32 on higher copper prices.

Ivanhoe's shares are still off their all-time high of $18, set in August 2007, due to uncertainty about whether the developers can navigate the schism between the Mongolian government and the country's parliament.

Preliminary results from a weekend election suggests the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party - which also governed the country when it was a Soviet satellite - won 41 seats in Sunday's vote.

That would give the party more than half of the 76 seats in parliament, called the State Great Khural.

Final election results were not expected until Tuesday. Preliminary results showed the Mongolian Democratic Party taking 25 seats and independents winning one seat.

The two main political parties focused their campaigns on how to tap recently discovered huge mineral deposits - including copper, gold and coal - but disagreed over whether the government or private sector should hold a majority stake.

The disagreement meant the outgoing parliament was unable to pass an amendment to the Minerals Law, which kept the government from concluding investment agreements with international mining giants to develop mineral deposits in the Gobi Desert.

Parliamentary elections are held every four years. Mongolia, with a population 2.6 million, stopped being a satellite state of the Soviet Union in 1990.