Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. October 16, the State Great Khural – the Mongolian Parliament is convening for a plenary meeting. Bills of State Budget for 2021, budget for 2021 Social Insurance Fund, budget for 2021 Health Insurance Fund, budget framework statement for 2021, budget assumption for 2022-2023 are placed on the agenda.

At the meeting, Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh delivered an address concerning the draft documents on the government budget for the next year. The Premier noted that the package of measures to prevent from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is under implementation, has been instrumental for reducing the increasing budget deficit, carrying out online, transparent and profitable budgetary policy, proper debt management and economic growth.

“In the bills submitted to the parliament discussion, the equilibrated budget revenue has grown by MNT 2.1 trillion compared to the 2020 budget amendments to reach MNT 11.8 trillion and total expenditure reduced by MNT 325 billion to be MNT 13.9 trillion and the equilibrated budget deficit is proposed at MNT 2.2 trillion, equal to 5.1 percent of the total GDP. The government has been pursuing a policy to improve budget discipline, and counter-cyclical fiscal policy to restore the economy. Moreover, improvement of tax and customs system and reforms underway in budget spending and debt management are contributing to the economy to grow further.”

In his address, PM Khurelsukh also stressed that since he was appointed as the Prime Minister of the country, the government has paid off debts totaling MNT 3.9 trillion, as of September 2020. Thanks to the alleviated debt burden, there have been annual increases in the wages and state pensions, which had not grown since 2014.

He highlighted that the current government will be working to execute the debt management strategy approved by the parliament to repay public debts without imposing burden on the economy and government budget and aims to bring the average economic growth to 6 percent between 2021 and 2023.

For the budget bill for 2021, the government has planned following seven principal policy measures;

1. To support the economy without raising taxes, to expand tax base with the help of advance digital technology, to increase efficiency of state-owned companies, collect taxes fully from natural resources to increase budget revenues

2. Each and every Mongolian person will benefit from the educational and health sectors’ reform and changes.

3. Measures targeting to protect the citizens’ incomes and support business entities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue in the first half of 2021.

4. The achievements made within the goal of air pollution reduction will be advanced. Government spending of payment imposed for raw coal consumption and oil royalty fees will be optimized, and gradual introduction and production of refined coal briquette will continue. The government is seeking to reduce air pollution in Ulaanbaatar city by up to 80 percent, advancing its past achievement of 50 percent as well as air pollution of centers of rural aimags.

5. Government services to become online to save public spending. Red tape and bureaucracy of government services will be reduced and become more transparent and faster. A good example of this goal is the recently-launched E-Mongolia digital platform of government services.

6. The increasing number of livestock animals will be coordinated with the sufficiency of grazing land. The budgets allocated to rural aimags will be increased, and rural aimags will be granted to exercise powers to tackle their own most-pressing issues on pasture management, desertification and supply of water and wells, etc depending on their own conditions, etc.

7. Capital investment to resolve critical problems faced by the society and local regions will be kept, including budget investment for construction and maintenance of schools, kindergartens, hospitals, auto roads, infrastructure facilities and cultural palaces in rural areas. In the 2021 budget, 1,030 projects and measures are planned with total investment of MNT 1,388.9 trillion from the state budget.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The 14th ICT Expo, the country's largest technology fair, took place between October 9 and 11.

One of the highlights of the event was the debut of Mongolia’s first artificial intelligence anchor, Maral, created by Chimege Systems Company. In the debut, the AI anchor had a brief conversation with President of Mongolian Software Industry Association (MOSA) Ts.Chuluunzagd in a booth where MOSA was hosting tech executives during the fair.

The MOSA President asked Maral the weather forecast, details about her, if she has all kinds of information and if he can ask anything from her, and about the place she was “born”. Maral answered every question without trouble and when Chuluunzagd asked her to tell about the place she was created, Maral inquired whether the question was about Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, or Chimege Systems.

Incidentally, Chimege Systems, a Mongolian startup company founded in 2019, has developed the recently-launched Chimege Writer mobile transcription application.

(CNN Business)Twitter, already under fire from lawmakers and regulators, appeared to go down altogether on Thursday.

An unknown number of users were unable to access the social network's website and mobile apps, with tracking website Downdetector recording more than 57,000 reports by 6 p.m. ET.

A Twitter (TWTR) spokesperson said the company was aware of the issue and was working to fix it.

"We have no evidence of a security breach or hack, and we're currently investigating internal causes," the spokesperson said.

The disruption comes a few months after a massive hack of some of Twitter's biggest accounts, including those belonging to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos and Kim Kardashian West, which regulators in New York this week said originated in a tech support scam.

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are under increased pressure to prevent their platforms from being compromised ahead of the November 3 US election, while also clamping down on disinformation and conspiracy theories. The companies are also being pressed to do more to regulate content that appears on their platforms, with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gearing up to draft regulations intended for social media companies following a petition earlier this year by the Trump administration.

Dharamshala: His Holiness the Dalai Lama yesterday addressed an assembly (online) of Buddhist monks at Gaden Tegcheling monastery in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

His Holiness said that Buddhism was not the primary bridge of Tibet and Mongolia’s relations as both their relations is said to have begun even before the spread of Buddhism to Tibet from India. Both being neighbours, they developed a longstanding historical and civilizational affinity.

“Buddhism gradually spread in Tibet and as an old saying goes, Buddhism is said to have travelled from north to north. From northern India, Buddhism originated and it spread northward to Tibet, Mongolia, and China, etc” said His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

His Holiness accounted that while he was in Tibet, he has met with many influential Mongolian Buddhist scholars and teachers. Among them, His Holiness mentioned that the best and most influential was a teacher named Ngodup Tsognyi from Sera Je.

Despite going through a difficult course of history, His Holiness commended the Mongolian for effectively preserving the faith and Buddhist heritage of Mongolia and advised them to benefit others through the Buddhist teachings.

Recounting one of his Mongolia visits in 1979, His Holiness explained that it was a difficult period for religious freedom, yet the Buddhist tradition had survived. “Despite everything, the Mongolian followers showed such zeal and dedication in preserving their faith that it brought me in tears”.

His Holiness asked the devotees especially the religious figures to pay more attention to studying Buddhist texts in the light of reason and logic and not studying it simply out of faith. He clarified that even the great scholars of Nalanda tradition analyzed and examined Buddhist teachings and a few times they refuted some of the teachings because it contradicted their logical analysis.

“Do not take the teachings of Buddha on faith alone but examine and confirm them using logical analysis” said His Holiness. He added that Buddhist teachings have a wider scope for benefitting others if it is evolved from a study of religion and faith.

His Holiness was invited by the Gaden Tegcheling monastery in Mongolia to address the assembled Mongolian monks at the Battsagaan Grand Assembly Hall.

Monks from both Sera Je and Deprung monasteries led by Mongolian Geshe Lharampas participated in the annual debate. The purpose of the debate is to maintain the studies of those Mongolian monks who had temporarily returned to Mongolia from their respective monasteries in South India due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Polls have closed across Mongolia in the 2020 elections for the Citizens’ Representative Khurals - local councils.

Preliminary results are being updated at this moment as ballots being counted at the 2,148 polling places throughout the country following the closure of the polls where Mongolians voted to elect their new representatives at the local self-government bodies for 21 aimags and their 330 soums and capital city Ulaanbaatar, and its 9 districts.

17,149 candidates of 9 political parties and coalitions and independents ran for the local elections for 8,169 seats in total nationwide.

In particular, in aimag and capital city-level Citizens’ Representative Khural elections, 1,901 candidates vied for the 816 seats, while in soum-level elections, 14,388 candidates participated for 7,062 mandates, and 696 candidates for 291 seats at district-level local councils, according to the General Election Commission.

As shown in the preliminary results of the elections provided by the Election Commission of Ulaanbaatar city, out of 291 mandates for the Citizens’ Representative Khurals of 9 districts of the capital city, and 201 mandates went to the representatives from the Mongolian People’s Party, 75 seats to the Democratic Party representatives, 10 seats to the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, one seat to Mongolian Green Party candidate and one seat to an independent candidate.

Because two candidates from the Mongolian People’s Party and Democratic Party have received the same number of votes, ending in ties at an electoral constituency in Nalaikh District with 4 mandates, the second ballot to be held within 10 days as stated in the corresponding law on local council elections.

As of 45 seats of the Citizens’ Representative Khural of Ulaanbaatar city, candidates of the Mongolian People’s Party gained majority by winning 34 seats, Democratic Party won 8 seats and Mongolian Labor Party 3 seats.

Final results of the elections for local council bodies in 21 aimags and 330 soums are being collected and to be merged together in coming hours.

Newmont CEO Tom Palmer is not interested in returning to Rio Tinto to replace CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques, the Financial Times reported.

Prior to joining Newmont in 2014, Palmer was Chief Operating Officer, Pilbara Mines at Rio Tinto.

Jacques resigned over the backlash of the destruction of two 46,000-year-old Aboriginal shelters this year to make way for the expansion of an iron ore mine. Other senior executives — iron ore boss Chris Salisbury, and corporate affairs head Simone Niven, who had responsibility for indigenous affairs — will also leave the company.

Representatives of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) peoples sent communications as early as 2008, setting out the importance of the site before preservation efforts picked up in the months before the blast – but they went unheeded, the group said in a submission to a government inquiry.

“I joined Newmont in 2014, very deliberately,” said Palmer, who was born in the New South Wales mining town of Broken Hill. “I saw a company that had a vision that was aligned with mine. And I have not regretted that decision for one second.”

Higher gold prices helped generate significant free cash flow for Newmont in 2020.

The world’s largest gold miner’s adjusted net income for the June quarter was $261 million or $0.32 per diluted share, compared with $92 million or $0.12 per diluted share in the prior-year quarter. The results topped analysts estimates of $0.31 per share.

The company lifted its dividend by 79% earlier this year.

“I already have the privilege of leading one of the great mining companies in the world. I’ve got the best team I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. And we have some great opportunities in front of us. I am firmly focused on that,” Palmer told the Financial Times.

Rio Tinto may choose to play it safe in its next choice of chief executive officer. Australian politicians are also piling on pressure for a local to be given the role, according to Bloomberg:

The outgoing CEO has also left plenty of problems for his replacement, well beyond the public relations disaster in Western Australia. A unit he set up to invest in green-economy materials has yet to make its mark. Mongolia, where Jacques’s role in settling a previous dispute was key to his elevation, remains a technical, financial and political headache. The future of the giant Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea is also unclear. Least defensible of all, he stopped short of putting the miner on a decisively carbon-light track, failing to set targets for lower emissions beyond the company’s own operations.

The US State Department has submitted a proposal for the Trump administration to add China’s Ant Group to a trade blacklist, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The move comes as the financial technology firm prepares to go public. If it is blacklisted, it could deter US investors from taking part in its initial public offering (IPO). Last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla), who has successfully urged President Donald Trump’s administration to pursue investigations into Chinese companies, called on the government to look at the options available to delay Ant’s IPO. The dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong could be worth up to a record $35 billion.

Ant’s Alipay payment app is currently unavailable for American users in the US, according to a company spokesperson. However, Trump administration officials fear the Chinese government could access the sensitive banking data of future US users.

The US Entity List makes it difficult for US firms to sell high-tech equipment to blacklisted companies. In May 2019, the Trump administration blacklisted Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, calling it a national security threat.

Ant is China’s dominant mobile payment company, offering loans, payments, insurance and asset management services via mobile apps. It is 33 percent owned by Alibaba and controlled by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

Like Tencent’s WeChat platform, Ant’s Alipay is used primarily by Chinese citizens with accounts in renminbi currency. Most of its US interactions are with merchants accepting payment from Chinese travelers and businesses in the country.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Strong international cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines could speed up the world economic recovery and add $9 trillion to global income by 2025, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday.

Speaking at a news conference after a meeting of the IMF’s steering committee, Georgieva also called on the United States and China to keep up strong economic stimulus that could help boost a global recovery.

She emphasized the need for vaccines to be distributed evenly across the world in both developing countries and wealthy nations, to boost confidence in travel, investment, trade and other activities.

“If we may make fast progress everywhere, we could speed up the recovery. And we can add almost $9 trillion to global income by 2025, and that in turn could help narrow the income gap between richer and poorer nations,” Georgieva said.

“We need strong international cooperation and this is most urgent today for vaccine development and distribution,” she said.

Equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines globally will be key to avoiding long lasting scars on the world economy, the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee said in its statement.

Georgieva also said she had “no doubt” that the U.S. Congress and the White House would ultimately agree on another spending package but was uncertain about the timing. Some $3 trillion in U.S. stimulus spending earlier this year “has been an important positive impulse and we would like to see how it would be continued again,” she said.

The committee said private creditors’ and official bilateral creditors’ participation in debt relief for poor countries is essential, with Georgieva adding that “further private sector participation is still needed, and it remains an outstanding issue.”

The G20 on Wednesday approved a six-month extension to mid-2021 of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) that freezes official bilateral debt payments, and said they would consider a further six-month extension in April. But private creditors and lenders outside the Paris Club are not fully participating.

“We are disappointed by the absence of progress of private creditors’ participation in the DSSI, and strongly encourage them to participate on comparable terms when requested by eligible countries,” the steering committee said, while encouraging “the full participation of official bilateral creditors.”

Reporting by David Lawder and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Sam Holmes

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. In September 2020, Labour agencies in aimags and the Capital city registered 4.7 thousand new unemployed, 1.4 thousand persons from the unemployment register hired on a new job, and 3.7 thousand persons removed from the unemployment register due to inactive job seeking. In Ulaanbaatar, 1.7 thousand persons newly registered in Labour agencies of municipal and the district offices, and 456 persons from the unemployment register were hired in September 2020.

Compared to the same period of the previous year, newly registered unemployed decreased by 2.6 thousand persons (35.7%), the number of persons from unemployment register hired on a new job decreased by 1.0 thousand persons (42.5%) and the number of persons removed from the unemployment register due to inactive job seeking decreased by 2.0 thousand persons (35.0%).

At the end of September 2020, the number of registered job seekers reached 27.5 thousand, of which 17.8 thousand (64.8%) were registered as unemployed and the remaining 9.7 thousand (35.2%) were employed but looking for a new job.

Registered unemployed decreased by 2.6 thousand (12.7%) from the same period of the previous year and 461 (2.5%) from the previous month. Out of the total registered unemployed, 9.4 thousand or 53.0% were women.

Source: National Statistics Office

In Eastern Mongolia near the Chinese border, the people of Erdenetsagaan are furious with the mining companies that have wreaked havoc on their community of 7,000. “Five mountains have disappeared. They are breaking them down and throwing them at us – literally,” says Baatarsukh, a semi-nomadic herder, as he surveys the region’s grasslands.

Pastures that once sustained his family’s way of life for generations are now caked in thick dust and pockmarked by open-pit mines that poison the local environment. “But no one cares about our health,” adds Baatarsukh, who also leads the local organization Erdenetsagaan Without Mining. “No one from the government will do anything.”

Mongolia’s herders aren’t alone in their fight against pollution, the world’s leading cause of disease, disability and premature death.

How Local Action Can Push for Enforcement of Anti-Pollution Laws

More than 150 countries now legally recognize the basic human right to a clean, healthy and safe environment. Many have enshrined this right within their constitutions, passed anti-pollution laws and established ministries to protect the environment. But there’s often a difference between what’s on paper and what gets enforced.

In practice, limited knowledge, capacity or funds prevents governments from upholding their laws, while corruption and lack of political will stymies enforcement in other countries. Whatever the cause, this disconnect leaves millions of people around the world — from neighborhoods of color in Flint, Michigan, to poor fishing villages across Serang, Indonesia — exposed to toxic water, noxious air and contaminated land.

Fed up with the governments’ failure to uphold their environmental rights, many communities are now filing lawsuits, organizing protests and engaging in local political processes to force clean-up.

A new toolkit for community-based action, developed in partnership with citizens and civil society organizations across Indonesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Thailand and Tunisia through WRI’s Strengthening the Right to Information for People and the Environment (STRIPE) project, can support these groups in their fight to hold officials and companies around the world to account. Using an environmental rights-based approach, it provides a roadmap for accessing environmental information, identifying when to engage in decision-making processes and building coalitions to advocate for stronger enforcement of anti-pollution policies.

In Mongolia, Baatarsukh and the residents of Erdenetsagaan have used these strategies to compel government officials to step up efforts to safeguard the community’s right to a safe, healthy and clean environment.

Known for its cashmere wool and lamb meat thanks to the fragile grasslands that support nomadic and semi-nomadic herders’ cows, horses, sheep and goats, Erdenetsagaan is also one of Mongolia’s burgeoning mining hotspots. Mines for coal, fluorspar, tungsten, oil and other commodities have sprung up around the region, with companies submitting new exploration requests each year, including five for radioactive uranium. But many of Erdenetsagaan’s residents have yet to benefit from this newfound economic growth. Instead, increased mineral extraction has threatened their lives, livelihoods and culture. Mining not only erodes the region’s grassland ecosystems, but residents also suspect that it leaches toxic contaminants into the groundwater, poisoning communities’ already limited water supply. Natural springs that once delivered clean drinking water to herders’ animals are also running dry as mining companies deplete local streams.

As mines have spread across Mongolia, so too have unpaved roads that cut across herders’ grazing lands. In Erdenetsagaan, a constant stream of mining trucks ferrying minerals across one of just four permanent road checkpoints between China and Mongolia raises clouds of dust that can travel up to three kilometers and are so thick that villagers can’t see across the road.

Respiratory diseases like asthma, once rare, are now common, while families’ herds are getting sicker. The gritty dust ruins milk curds, a staple of local diets, and soils precious cashmere wool before it can reach the market. These plumes have also sullied the few natural springs that still provide water to herders’ animals, forcing families to dig expensive new wells or abandon their traditional campgrounds.

This environmental injustice wasn’t supposed to happen.

Mongolia’s national laws, many of which have been passed only in recent decades, set some pollution limits to reduce communities’ exposure to harmful chemicals as well as give residents the right to have a say in where companies can mine. At the local level, an agreement between Erdenetsagaan’s provincial government and the mining company that uses the dusty road legally requires the miners to pave the main thoroughfare. Yet the road remains unpaved.

Residents have also documented two oil and fluorspar mining companies’ consistent illegal actions, but officials have yet to revoke the corporations’ licenses. And community members’ repeated requests to access basic environmental information, including environmental impact assessments, water and land use permits, reports detailing companies’ violations of mining regulations and public consultation notices, continue to go unanswered.

The government’s failure to act has eroded trust between the community and their representatives, while joint efforts between officials, companies and local leaders to address residents’ concerns have completely broken down. Community members instead have turned to protests.

Community-based Toolkit Can Support Fight Against Environmental Injustice

In 2015, with support from STRIPE’s Mongolian partners, local civil society organizations used WRI’s toolkit to support residents across Erdenetsagaan and three other communities affected by mining to advocate for strengthening and enforcing pollution laws. These organizations began by helping residents understand Mongolia’s environmental and mining laws, including policies that require officials to disclose environmental information and to consult the public before issuing mining licenses.

Communities then used the toolkit to collect the data they needed to identify the legally mandated actions that government authorities had failed to take. With this information and continued capacity-building support from STRIPE partners, they formed a broad, nationwide coalition to fight against mining pollution.

Together, members of the coalition used the toolkit to prioritize and then advocate for a wide range of changes: amendments to strengthen Mongolia’s national mineral and water laws, better enforcement of existing mining regulations and expanded access to environmental information. Their efforts successfully pushed officials to revoke licenses from companies who repeatedly violated Mongolia’s laws, and in Zaamar, one of the four mining communities, coalition members successfully renegotiated the agreement between communities and the mining companies to secure funding for local development priorities, including initiatives to support small businesses, build new housing, plant trees and protect families from the dust.

Another affected community compelled local authorities to hire a local community leader to monitor mining companies and report violations to the national government. While these steps forward cannot undo the environmental degradation that mining has already inflicted upon these four communities, they can help protect residents from future pollution.

These successes from Mongolia showcase how effective an environmental rights-based approach to combatting pollution can be, and WRI’s toolkit is the first to focus on this challenge.

Citizens Can Help Safeguard the Environment

Enabling poor, marginalized communities – those both literally and figuratively distant from those with power – to define and advocate for their own solutions can spark lasting gains, while also equipping local residents with the knowledge and skills they need to continue pushing for change long after project cycles end. By learning how to effectively make their voices heard, citizens can become a powerful, productive force for good, helping governments ensure that everyone has the opportunity to live a safe, healthy and pollution-free life.

This decades-long fight against pollution also serves as an important reminder to policymakers around the world — particularly those designing COVID-19 recovery packages to reduce endemic poverty and inequalities — that building back better will require targeted support to communities.

Political leaders must go beyond acknowledging the important role that communities can play in safeguarding environmental health to actually providing the tools, finance and resources that citizens need to define and advance locally led strategies.