He made the remarks on Monday, according to the government's press office Tuesday.

"The capital city has scored great achievements in its development," said Khurelsukh. "However, the city has been facing many issues such as air pollution and traffic congestion caused by population concentration."

On May 15, a government ban on domestic use of low-grade coal in Ulan Bator came into force, with the aim of reducing air pollution, said the prime minister.

Since then, households in the city have been supplied with processed fuel instead of raw coal.

In the future, the government will take all available measures to curb air pollution which is one of the most pressing issues in the capital city, he added.

Ulan Bator, home to over half of Mongolia's population, suffers from severe air pollution in winter. A total of eight people died and dozens of people have been hospitalized here since early October due to allegedly burning processed coal to keep warm.

On his observation on SMEs of Mongolia and export, Vice President of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization of Turkey (KOSGEB) S. Tuna Sahin said, “It seems that mining and agriculture are the two main sectors in Mongolia. However, I am happy to see that Mongolians are paying more attention to the cashmere sector in recent years, putting in effort into all stages from preparing commodities to processing, and creating a high-quality final products through restructuring. Sector diversification of Mongolian SMEs is the right path.”

On the matter of giving support to SMEs in Turkey, S. Tuna Sahin said, “We support start-ups, small and micro business owners from the stage of employment. For instance, they receive support in sourcing finance and marketing for their products and services alongside participating in foreign markets. We give our services to 3 million entities and citizens that own SMEs.”

During the forum, the SME Development Fund and the KOSGEB Agency of Turkey signed a memorandum on exchanging practices.

Export financing takes 55.6 percent of the total loans given by the Development Bank of Mongolia

Director of Credit Financing Department of the Development Bank of Mongolia B.Uyanga said, “With the Export Mongolia-2019 being organized for the 5th consecutive year, our bank is also co-organizing the forum for the 5th year as the Development Bank of Mongolia finances factories that are working to export their products as well as those that are currently exporting alongside projects being implemented by entities. With the revisal of the Law on Development Bank of Mongolia in 2017, it was set that more than 60 percent of the programs are to be export-oriented.”

In the framework of the forum, a fair is being organized under the theme, ‘Mongolian Brands in the World’, with the participation of Mongolian export companies. From the export products being presented at the fair, a single product is to be selected, which will be promoted at the ‘Made in Mongolia’ event that will take place in Japan alongside winning the ‘Best of the Best’ award.

Under Mongolia’s Criminal Law, if someone confesses that paying bribery for government service due frustration, then they will not be punished

The new system is expected to work as a “gateway” model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.

According to Izvestia, the parties involved will work on a single platform, without experiencing any difficulties with transactions.

Russia began development of SPFS in 2014 amid Washington’s threats to disconnect the country from SWIFT. The first transaction on the SPFS network involving a non-bank enterprise was made in December 2017.

“We have an opportunity to connect both foreign banks and foreign legal entities to the SPFS. Today, about 400 users are participating in the system. Agreements have already been concluded with eight foreign banks and 34 legal entities,” Alla Bakina, the director of the Bank of Russia’s national payment system, was cited as saying by Vesti.

Bakina explained that traffic through the system has been growing and currently accounts for around 15 percent of all internal traffic, up from 10-11 percent last year.

The EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) countries are currently working with the Bank of Russia on technical options for connecting to the SPFS. Iran, which has officially joined the Russia-led free-trade zone (EAEU) this month also seeks to develop a joint alternative to SWIFT. Last year, SWIFT cut off some Iranian banks from its messaging system.SWIFT is based in Belgium, but its board includes executives from American banks with US federal law allowing the administration to act against banks and regulators across the globe.

Instead of SWIFT, a system that facilitates cross-border payments between 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries worldwide, Moscow and Tehran will use their own domestically developed financial messaging systems to conduct trade.

The airline operates this route 3 times weekly.

TK362 IST1955 – 0920+1ULN 332 135
TK363 IST1050 – 1430IST 332 246

Service operated by A330-300 with operational day changes from 29MAR20. Overall service for Istanbul – Bishkek sector will be revised from 12 to 11 weekly.

The Municipality of Ulaanbaatar City has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to support the implementation of green building standards and certification systems for the new homes.

According to the IFC, a third of Mongolia’s population live in urban ger areas, or settlements of low and middle income households – these districts suffer from poor sanitation, inadequate solid waste management and limited water supply, which pose health and environmental hazards.

These ger areas heavily rely on coal and biofuels for heating and energy, which generate large carbon emissions and worsens air pollution, especially during the winter.

Out of the 10,000 homes, 1,500 will be social housing, 5,500 will be affordable housing and the remaining 3,000 will be sold at the market price.

Arnaud Heckmann, ADB Principal Urban Development Specialist said: “About 850,000 people live in Ulaanbaatar’s ger areas and have poor access to urban services. Our partnership with IFC will help us apply the EDGE [Excellence for Design and Greater Efficiencies] certification system and standard in designing and constructing green, comfortable, and affordable homes for citizens living in ger areas.”

“By implementing the program favorable conditions will be created for investment and manufacturing of non-mining export products. We are working towards it. We also expect that the contribution of agricultural processing industry will be augmented to the total export of Mongolia with increased export income of the sector through increasing types of value added export products and raising competitiveness of goods. Mongolia’s total foreign trade turnover reached USD 12.9 billion last year, of which USD 7 billion was export and USD 5.9 billion was import. Among them, export of ready-made garment and textile products has been upped by 21.7 percent from the previous year, animal-origin products by 6.8 percent and food products by 5.5 percent respectively and it indicates possibilities of increasing export of value added products."

Then the Minister said that the Parliament adopted SME law and the Government defined SME development program, policy and priorities while the MFALI approved a regulation on selecting projects to be provided with long term, soft loans from the SME Development Fund. "Various regulations and coordination were reflected in these policy papers in directions of export promotion. Further, we will pay special attention on supporting small and medium enterprises through non-financial ways, developing specialized export consulting service and creating export-oriented products and services.

The Export Mongolia 2019 Forum is being held under the motto ‘One policy, One window and One prosperity’ targeting to implement programs adopted by the Government, attract foreign investors, expand foreign relations and cooperation in export as well as promote export-oriented products and service at global market.

Being co-organized by government and non-government organizations such as the MFALI, SME Development Fund, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Development Agency, the Council on Mongolian National Brand and Export International Trading Center, the first business forum is running for two days and more than 350 private enterprises and over 1000 delegation of foreign and domestic entities are taking part.

However, the Mongolian Government needs to focus on decreasing budget deficits and cabinet debts, estimating tax revenue accurately and attracting foreign investments when discussing 2020 State Budget. Mongolia will need to act appropriately with the three-year accumulated reserve, in order to avoid foreign exchange market intervention for stabilizing exchange rates.