11 Parliament Members initiated a draft Law on Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) and submitted it to the Parliament for discussion. Following its submission, another draft Law on Artisanal Mining was developed and submitted by the Government to the Parliament. Both the drafts were accepted and discussed on the Parliament session and a decision to combine the drafts into one draft law was made. 

The draft laws were presented and discussed by the Standing Committee on Economics and the Mongolian People's Revolution Party Group members and combined into a draft Law on ASM. The combined draft Law on ASM was submitted to a Parliament session for its first discussion.

Unfortunately, during the discussion of the draft Law by the Standing Committee on Economics, the members made a proposal to exclude artisanal hard rock mining from the scope of draft law. This proposal would make the law immature and incomplete. As hard rock ASM is out of the scope of the Law, a number of current ASM related problems will remain unsolved and unregulated as they are now. For instance,

1. Although the Minerals Law in Mongolia is been in force for over decade, no any ASM related concens have been addressed and considered by the Law. If hard rock ASM is out of legal and regulatory scope in the future, it will remain also illegal action. 
2. The problems such as poverty and lack of unemployment and incomes will remain the same for artisanal miners engaged in in (hard rock) gold, fluorspar and coal mining. However, decision makers do not conssider their problems as a whole ASM community.
3. To date, artisanal miners, who work at hard rock gold mines, constitute over 40 % of total ASM communities in the country.
4. Artisanal miners in hard rock gold mines use chemicals (mercury) that causes serious concern to the environment & human health. This serious problem will also remain unregulated.
5. The proposal "to leave hard rock gold ASM out of scope of drarf law would lead serious consequences in the future. In fact, accidents and risky fortunes are more likely to find in hard rock gold mining sites than placer gold mining. Therefore, artisanal mining either in placer or hard rock mines requires adequate regulation and coordination.