Mongolia imports China's vegetables www.xinhuanet.com

HOHHOT－At dusk, 32-year-old driver Bideryar from Mongolia drove his refrigerated truck to pick up vegetables in Erenhot, North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the largest port along the China-Mongolia border. "Vegetables from China have brought more choices to our dinner table, and changed our eating habits," he said. "I mainly ate meat in the past, but now, I also eat vegetables imported from China. I am healthier."

Bideryar's sister is a vegetable wholesaler in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia. His sister usually sends the list of vegetables needed to the salesman in Erenhot via WeChat and will be notified when the vegetables are ready, upon which Bideryar will leave Ulan Bator for Erenhot.

With a population of about 3 million, Mongolia mainly relies on China for vegetables. "In Mongolia, some people have never even seen some of the vegetables from China, but more and more Mongolians are willing to try them," said Gyiya from Mongolia.

Ganerdeni, 37, has been a driver running between Ulan Bator and Erenhot for 17 years. "I work for many vegetable wholesalers, and the need for vegetables from China in Ulan Bator is far from being met," he said.

Every day, 10 to 20 refrigerated trucks will depart from Ulan Bator and return early in the morning two days later. The fresh vegetables from China will appear on supermarket shelves at night in Ulan Bator, he said.

"But five years ago, a two-way trip would take three to four days due to the shabby dirt road. But now, with a new road built, a one-way trip only takes eight hours," he said.

Additionally, customs time for fruits and vegetables was shortened last year and made a priority to speed up the process. "It takes only several minutes for a truck carrying fruits or vegetables to be cleared by customs," said Zhang Hongwei with Erenhot customs.

Haogang fruit and vegetable import and export company is the largest of its kind between China and Mongolia. It works with over 40 supermarkets and vegetable markets in Mongolia, and exports more than 100,000 metric tons of vegetables and fruits to Mongolia every year.

According to Erenhot customs, 69,000 tons of vegetables were exported in 2017, up 20.6 percent year-on-year.

"In the past, they just bought what we sold, mainly potatoes, onions and cabbages, but now, we sell what they order," said Zhao Long, 49, general manager of the company, who has been working in the trade for more than 20 years.

One of the purchase orders from Mongolia lists 51 kinds of vegetables, 19 kinds of fruits, six kinds of fungi and two spices. "Each listing also has a photo, so if we don't know what something is, the picture can help us figure it out," he said. "For example, we get celery from Shandong, cabbages from Fujian, and onions from Yunnan."

The company has built a base of more than 70 hectares in a village in Erenhot to plant products based on the orders from Mongolia. Other companies in Erenhot are also developing e-commerce to make it possible for customers in Mongolia to receive fresh vegetables they have ordered the same day.

Mongolian engineers making excavator dipper www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Engineering technicians of Baganuur JSC are domestically making hoe dipper of ESH 10/70 excavator themselves. By producing the dipper at home, it is possible to reduce expense for foreign purchases by over 40 percent.

Why is Mongolia overdosing on antibiotics www.ozy.com

Dr. Bill Frankland, a 106-year-old allergy expert, is one of the precious few still alive to remember Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, as well as the warning that followed just eight years later. Franklin recalls, “Fleming said there would be a revolution, but doctors will overuse it, and because bacteria have to survive … they will become resistant to it.”

Fleming’s predictions came true, and the link between antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic use is well established. Countries around the world are still coming to grips with ways of rationing such drugs to limit the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. But it’s not just wealthy Western countries overusing the technology. In fact, according to a World Health Organization survey of 65 countries …

PEOPLE IN MONGOLIA ARE THE WORLD’S MOST PROLIFIC USERS OF ANTIBIOTICS, WITH AN AVERAGE OF 64.4 PEOPLE PER 1,000 ON ANTIBIOTICS ON ANY GIVEN DAY.
Not only that, but Mongolia’s usage was nearly twice as high as the runner-up, Iran, which had an average 38.78 people per 1,000 on antibiotic treatment per day. This doesn’t mean Mongolia has more antibiotics, in terms of volume — that would actually be Turkey, which consumed 1,195.69 metric tons of antibiotics in 2015 — but that those in Mongolia are the most likely to use antibiotics.

Dr. Moazzam Ali, an epidemiologist who’s researched the irrational use of drugs while based at the University of Tokyo, Japan — including the use of non-prescribed antibiotics in Mongolia — says that two of the most common uses of antibiotics in low- and middle-income developing countries is pneumonia and diarrhea. “It might be a simple flu, but they would treat it with antibiotics. This is especially the case when it comes to treating children,” he says. A 2010 study he undertook with other researchers in Mongolia found that 71 percent of children in the 503 households studied were given prescribed antibiotics, and a fifth of them had been given non-prescribed antibiotics as well. Just under half of the caregivers would give children antibiotics for a cough, fever or cold, and a survey showed they largely lacked basic knowledge about the proper use of the drugs.

WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier says higher antibiotic use can be attributed to the “disease pattern” in Mongolia. Respiratory and genitourinary tract infections are the first and fourth leading causes of death in the country, and people use antibiotics to treat both of them. He also cites tuberculosis as a leading problem, including multidrug-resistant strains, which he estimates were behind 8.5 percent of registered new cases of communicable diseases in 2017. “The high burden of communicable diseases contributes to the use and overuse of antibiotics,” he says.

Since 2001, it’s been illegal to supply drugs like penicillin over the counter, but it still happens. While the laws are in place, the regulatory mechanisms for oversight are fragmented and duplicated over different authorities, resulting in weak enforcement.

The number of private pharmacies in the country rose quickly after the Mongolian revolution in 1990 — a country assessment report by the Mongolian Development Research Institute indicated that between 1995 and 2004, the figure nearly increased eightfold from less than 100 to circa 800 — and the introduction of a free-market economy made drugs easier to buy, as they could be bought over the counter.

One 2013 study, by researchers at Curtin University and the Curtin Health Institute in Western Australia, that surveyed 22 pharmacies, 118 doctors and 394 patients in both rural and urban areas of Mongolia even found that practitioners themselves would wrongly prescribe antibiotics in some instances, particularly in urban centers. In rural areas, they have their own problems, with the lack of qualified doctors and drugs being difficult to access, at least the right ones. Ali notes, however, that even traditional healers, found mostly in the countryside, might use antibiotics in whatever concoction they end up making, which could include a number of other drugs.

“When you talk about antimicrobial resistance, it’s knowledge and information that matters; educational status matters,” says Ali, noting that the older generations commonly believe that antibiotics are a cure-all, regardless of whether the person’s condition actually will be helped by taking one.

According to Laura Rogers, deputy director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, at George Washington University, doctors have noticed antibiotic resistance building for decades — but 30 years ago, they tended to operate on the belief that new antibiotics could always be created to outmaneuver the bacteria. It wasn’t until a 2014 report on antimicrobial resistance commissioned by the U.K. government that the world really woke up to the problem. And in Mongolia, awareness-raising programs — currently one of WHO’s key priorities — only really started around two years ago.

Mass education is only part of the solution, though. Other key factors would include establishing an effective drug regulatory authority to improve enforcement of the law against non-prescribed drugs and strengthening surveillance systems to get more information about patterns, trends and consumption habits. It’s not only human antibiotic use that should be monitored either: Use of antibiotics in animal feed is also widespread in Mongolia, according to WHO, a practice that has been used globally to hasten production but could have harmful effects for both animal and human health as it breeds drug-resistant germs that can then jump to humans. Livestock accounts for 83 percent of the country’s agricultural sector, and exports of meat rose an estimated 20 percent between 2017 and 2018.

Health professionals are quick to note that the message here is not for people, in Mongolia or elsewhere, to stop taking antibiotics. Countries like Burundi, which had the lowest levels of antibiotic use in the WHO survey, are setting off their own alarm bells. While the overuse of antibiotics is a critical problem, the lack of access for those who need them can’t be ignored either.

Sophia Akram, OZY Author

Mongolia's central bank keeps key interest rate unchanged www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The monetary policy council of Mongolia's central bank on Friday decided to maintain the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 11 percent.

Over 36,500 sign petition urging UN attention to air pollution in Mongolian capital www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Mongolians are lodging an online petition for the attention of the United Nations regarding the heavy air pollution in the country's capital, having gathered some 36,500 signatures within about 36 hours.

Experts warn of potential obstruction to export plan in 2019 www.zgm.mn

Analysts of the economist club of Bloomberg TV Mongolia warn of potential risk in meeting export and budget revenue plans driven by prices of key export commodities and border situation that could affect the economy in 2019.

Mongolia's crime cases up 14.6 pct in first 11 months www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- The number of crime cases in Mongolia in the first 11 months of the year increased 14.6 percent from the same period last year, according to official statistics released on Thursday.

Canadian coal plants to be phased out by 2030 www.mining.com

The federal government of Canada announced on Dec. 12, 2018, that traditional coal-fired electric generation plans will be phased out by 2030. Greenhouse gas regulations for natural gas-fired generating stations was also published.

Mongolia to inaugurate Trade Representatives Office in Tokyo www.zgm.mn

Prime Minister Khurelsukh Ukhnaa met with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe yesterday and held discussion on free-trade agreement. At the end of the meeting, sides released a joint statement, in which the sides officially announced to implement a Master Plan on Creating Value-Chain via Sustainable Development of Agriculture.

Key highlights of the statement:

Mongolian Government is now obliged to finalize the negotiation of concession agreement on a new airport in Khushigiyn Valley within January 2019 and inaugurating the airport within next year. In turn, the Japanese Government expressed on continuing the support on consortium activities.

Acknowledging the massive potential in Mongolia, sides expressed to intensify public and private cooperation in tourism.

The PMs agreed on supporting technical cooperation in cashmere production, building the capacity of cashmere companies and intensifying the promotion of Mongolian cashmere in Japanese market.

On the sidelines of his official visit to Japan, Prime Minister Khurelsukh Ukhnaa met with the Chairman of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Hiroyuki Ishige yesterday and attended the 9th Mongolia-Japan Public and Private Sector Joint Committee meeting, during which the PM announced to establish Trade Representative Office in Tokyo.

During the meeting, sides exchanged views on the progress of implementation of Mongolia-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. Mr. Hiroyuki Ishige expressed his delight with the improvement of bilateral trade turnover and business relations and stressed that Japanese firms face difficulties in doing business in Mongolia and asked the Prime Minister to pay attention to it.

PM Khurelsukh said that Mongolian government is giving great importance to the protection of investors’ interest and working to establish Trade Representative Office in Tokyo in order to provide foreign investors with comprehensive investment on information and increase opportunities for their business development. Prime Minister expressed willingness to cooperate closely with JETRO on implementation and efficiency improvement of the Economic Partnership Agreement, which took effect in June 2016, and announced that a One-Stop Service will be available for investors starting from January 1, 2019. At the 9th Mongolia-Japan Government and Business Sector Joint Committee meeting, Director General of the National Development Agency Bayarsaikhan Banzragch presented the current state of economy, development policy planning, internal and external environment for investments, tax and non-tax support, advantages, opportunities and statistics, and introduced the Government activities to support FDI in detail.

PM addressed, “Mongolian Government is paying special attention in maintaining economic stability, improving the legal environment for doing business. Mongolia is successfully overcoming the economic difficulty that it faced in recent years. As a result of several measures on protecting investors’ interest and restoring their confidence, FDI in Mongolia significantly grew since 2017. For instance, the FDI jumped by around 30 percent yoy as of the third quarter of this year.”

He then asked about the difficulties in doing business in Mongolia. In response, Kazuhiro Osonoe, CEO of Takarajima Japan LLC, highlighted Mongolians’ credence as a major risk factor. Mr. Kazuhiro Osonoe suggested, “Accountability is crucial for Mongolia to attract investment. Japan has the technology, knowhow and assets, while Mongolia has the opportunity.”

North Korean athletes to participate in Mongolia’s Basketball League www.news.mn

The Mongolian National Basketball League consisting of teams from the 21 provinces will be held in January 2019. Four North Korean athletes with their coach will be coming to Mongolia to participate in the competition. In addition, the Mongolian basketball team will conduct joint training in North Korea during the first half of 2019.