Ulan Bator---Mongolians have voted to back stalled foreign investment in the country's vast natural resources, authorities announced Wednesday, after a controversial four-day text message referendum.
The poll saw 56.1 percent of respondents support increased overseas investment in megaprojects such as the foreign-backed Oyu Tolgoi mine that could stimulate the troubled economy, the government said.
The alternative of austerity via reduced state expenditures took 43.9 percent.
Mongolia enjoyed world-leading economic growth in recent years -- peaking at 17.5 percent in 2011 -- on the back of a minerals boom exemplified by the giant copper- and gold-laden Oyu Tolgoi mine, operated by Anglo-Australian resources giant Rio Tinto.
But that expansion has slumped to troubling levels, as rising resource nationalism and an increasingly stringent investment environment led most foreign investors to abandon the country.
Foreign direct investment into the landlocked country wedged between giants China and Russia crashed 74 percent last year, according to the central bank.
New Prime Minister Chimed Saikhanbileg used the telephone poll to seek a mandate less than three months after he took office via parliamentary negotiations after his predecessor was ousted.
Mongolia last held parliamentary elections in 2012. President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj was re-elected for another four-year term in 2013.
The vote for foreign investment is a win for Saikhanbileg, a supporter of his country's megaprojects and advocate of FDI-fuelled growth.
But netizens ridiculed the exercise, decrying the poll as a "sham" and an "obvious attempt by the government to divert liability".
Text messages were sent to about 3.31 million mobile phones -- more than the country's three million population.
Each recipient of the SMS could vote once, but people with more than one mobile phone could vote with each device and foreign residents and visitors from overseas registered with domestic phone carriers were also able to participate.
But participation was low with responses coming from only around 10 percent of phones, the results showed.
In the run-up to the poll, texts from the government explaining the referendum had been personally addressed by Saikhanbileg, who texted: "Let's choose the road to development together."
The poll was the first nationwide one of its kind in Mongolia, after local votes on driving restrictions in the traffic-congested capital of Ulan Bator.
But commentators criticised it as a way for the government to avoid responsibility and shift the blame to the people in the event that the chosen initiative fails.
The referendum came after revenue-sharing negotiations between Oyu Tolgoi operator Rio Tinto and the Mongolian state stalled in 2014. A new investment law has also scared off investors.
Last week a Mongolian court convicted three former executives of a mining company controlled by Rio Tinto -- one of them a US citizen -- for tax evasion and sentenced them to more than five years in prison.
Along with slowing economic growth the country's currency, the tugrik, has seen a precipitous fall in value, spawning double-digit inflation.
AFP
