State Head meets ADB president

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Mongolia has an aspiration to cooperate with Asian Development Bank (ADB) in resolving budget consumption with the direct democracy and civil participation because the country is transmitting into a system of resolving the budget under the civil power. The State Head Ts.Elbegdorj said it when he met Monday visiting Mr Takehiko Nakao, the ADB President and Chairperson of ADB's Board of Directors. “Economy of Mongolia rose by 17.5 per cent in 2011 and by 12.3 per cent in 2012, becoming the fastest grown economy in the world. It is mainly influenced by the intensively growing mining sector. Thus, Mongolia is adhering to a policy on specializing the economy by supporting the industries of value-added products and developing the production and technologies in order to reduce the dependency on only mining sector” Mr Elbegdorj underlined. “Now it is time to properly exploit capital from the mining sector, so we are learning from the experience of other countries such as Norway. We have already set up a working group on it, and we also set some plans for reserving money from the mining industry. We thank the ADB for supporting it,” the President said, adding that Mongolia is paying big attention to the environmental issues. Mr Elbegdorj emphasized some works have been planned to do in the upcoming two years, for example, works will be done in the sectors of infrastructure, railway, power station, renewable energy and reducing air pollution. He added that Mongolia wants to collaborate with the ADB in implementing these works. In response, Mr Nakao thanked the State Head for a warm audience, and said the ADB is ready to expand the ties and to collaborate with Mongolia in many spheres. Mr Nakao said he was satisfied with the ADB’s contribution to an intensive development of Mongolia. At the end of the meeting, the State Head said Mongolia intends to carry on its long-year fruitful relations with the ADB. Present at the meeting were Mr Ayumi Konishi, the ADB Deputy Director-General for Asia-Pacific Department; Tomoyuki Saisu, a chief advisor to the ADB president; L.Dashdorj, an advisor to the State Head on economic policy; Mr Robert Schoellhammer, the country director of the ADB for Mongolia; and Yan Hansen, a senior economist at the ADB.