ADB Asian Development Bank : Extends Assistance to Sustain Education Quality, Access in Mongolia www.4-traders.com

ULAANBAATAR, MONGOLIA (21 November 2017)- The Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Board of Directors has approved a $50 million loan to help sustain access to and quality of pre-primary, primary, and secondary education in Mongolia, as continued economic difficulties pose challenges to the provision of quality education services in the country.

'Significant cuts in the education budget for 2017 and beyond constrain the government's capacity to mitigate further deterioration of education services,' said Asako Maruyama, Education Specialist at ADB's East Asia Department. 'This would result in lost opportunities for pre-primary, primary, and secondary education, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, unless some mitigating measures are implemented.'

With declining foreign direct investment and falling commodity prices, Mongolia's economic growth has slowed, from 17.3% in 2011 to 1.0% in 2016. The slowdown has led to large revenue shortfalls and cuts in government investment, requiring the government to adopt the Economic Recovery Plan supported by the International Monetary Fund and reduce public spending further. The education budget has been cut to a minimum, only enough to keep schools and kindergartens operating.

Meanwhile, seats in schools and kindergartens have increasingly become unavailable due to the growth in the school and kindergarten-aged population, which has been outpacing the construction and expansion of schools and kindergartens. During 2009-2015, enrollments in pre-primary education doubled, while the number of kindergartens increased only 1.5 times. Likewise, enrollments in primary and secondary education rose by 7.8% during 2012-2015, but only 13 schools were built. The gap in enrollment capacity has been widening particularly in Ulaanbaatar because of disproportionate population growth caused by internal migration. Of the 33 schools operating in three shifts in the country, 30 are in Ulaanbaatar.

The quality of education also suffers. The curriculum reform, which started in school year 2013 from primary education, remains incomplete without new curriculum for senior secondary education and reliable student learning assessment system. Adequate teaching and learning materials accompanying the new curriculum have not been developed or distributed to schools on time. Moreover, teachers, school managers, and local education administrators have received little training on the new curriculum.

The project aims to minimize these negative effects during this difficult economic period by narrowing the gap in the enrollment capacity of schools and kindergartens, and supporting the curriculum and associated assessment system reforms, provision of teaching and learning materials, and training of teachers, school managers, and local education administrators. It will also strengthen systems for planning and managing education services. The project will directly benefit about 15,000 children enrolled in 35 newly constructed or expanded schools and kindergartens.

ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, ADB is celebrating 50 years of development partnership in the region. It is owned by 67 members-48 from the region. In 2016, ADB assistance totaled $31.7 billion, including $14 billion in cofinancing.

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The Chinese Communist party’s 19th Congress continues to shape the way we think about China, policymaking and the state of the country’s financial and capital markets.

An increasingly authoritarian China will try to make the economy and society work better, not become more liberal. It will try to engineer a harmless deleveraging, which is without precedent. Its large savings are likely to remain trapped, limiting the oft-cited internationalisation of the renminbi.

These issues matter, not least for investors because China’s $7tn equity market and its $10tn bond market are the world’s second-, and fourth-largest, respectively. Next year, Chinese A-shares will be included in the MSCI emerging markets benchmark.

Chinese bonds face bigger hurdles to inclusion in global benchmarks but some bonds are already part of lesser indices. Party cells in company management and high scores given to issuers by Chinese bond rating agencies are now on every investor’s “must find out” list.

The centralisation of power around Xi Jinping at the apex of a strengthened party — a substitute for the institutionalisation of rules, constraint and consensus — means there will be more dogma than debate in policymaking.

To oppose the president will be to oppose the party. Binary outcomes mean that, when something goes wrong, market risks will be higher and blame will lie firmly at Xi’s feet. Investors always worry about politics but concerns are greater in the absence of sound institutions.

Xi Jinping’s China will probably be the antithesis of reform and opening up. There is no sign that the government intends to address its deeply conflicted roles as owner, participant and regulator in the economy and finance. Investor interests will always be subordinate.

The recent announcement to lift the ceiling of foreign ownership of financial firms might be significant if it happened on a significant scale but the financial commanding heights will not be ceded to foreigners.

The most immediate issue, though, is financial policy. The government’s current financial crackdown and regulatory tightening is aimed at China’s debt, which is still expanding at about 14 per cent per annum and funded by increasingly short-term and volatile deposits. Financial conditions have been tightening with 10-year bond yields up by almost 2 percentage points over the past year to reach over 4 per cent, the highest for three years.

Markets expect the squeeze to continue, along with more bond defaults, and rising concerns about deteriorating debt service capacity and credit rollover risks. Zhou Xiaochuan, the outgoing head of the central bank, has warned of a “Minsky Moment” if leverage isn’t reduced.

Here is the rub, however. Slower credit expansion is leading to slower economic growth, as recent indicators confirm. Ostensibly, the party seems prepared for this as its focus shifts to inequality, social, rural development and industrial policy goals. Yet, if the government were willing to permit a proper and sustained deleveraging, it would have to accommodate much slower growth, higher unemployment, and degrees of financial and currency stress — none of which are yet present.

The central bank’s key policy rate has been raised but, at about 2.5 per cent, it is far from the 5-8 per cent seen in the tightening cycles in 2011 and 2013-14.

Monetary tightening has been modest, especially with producer price inflation running at about 7 per cent, and rising core consumer prices. All lenders and most borrowers, including the array of local government borrowing platforms, remain fully funded. The central bank continues to inject several hundred billion renminbi regularly to keep markets calm.

We need to pay attention to the December Economic Work Conference and the actions of the new Financial Stability and Development Committee. But past and current behaviour suggest that, faced with more growth volatility and downside risk, the government will again ease policy — so 2018 will be a crucial time to determine the guts of financial policy.

More generally, from behind a wall of controls on outward capital movements, China is showcasing to the world its state intervention and authoritarian model. From the other side, we can see strongly controlled capital markets, a currency against which foreigners can’t build major claims, and a limited appetite for voluntary deleveraging.

Xi Jinping’s China will have to resolve a fundamental contradiction between rising economic heft — and increasing political illiberalism — at a time of significant financial volatility.

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