President delivers speech at Mongolia Economic Forum

Politics
amina@montsame.mn
2018-05-22 17:18:03
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ President of Mongolia Khaltmaagiin Battulga addressed the General Session of Mongolia Economic Forum on Day 2.

The President said, “There are many things we need to dedicate serious considerations to. However difficult it is to listen and admit to, it is the high time we confronted the unpleasant truth.

Regardless of Mongolians’ imagination of and pedantry and debate over the growth of Mongolia and initiation of countless ornamented projects, geopolitics of great powers, their geo-economic tendency, power distribution and gravitations are the factors which bring actual effect to the Mongolian economy through forcing their interests on, halting and forwarding our projects.

Researcher Lucy Hornby wrote in the Financial Times, one of the leading finance and business newspapers, that Mongolian laws on mining and investment can be deemed the most liberal in the world. Aside from concluding that Mongolian mining and investment regimen as the most liberal on the globe, she added that Mongolian cabinets are keen to modify the mineral laws in favor of investors in order for major agreements to be secured.

Nevertheless, the amount of investment is not rising. Researchers strongly advise to seek the reasons from the instability of governance and geopolitical tendencies of the great powers of the world.

Boasting so-called most favorable legal grounds for investment, yet, Mongolia could not make the Top 80 countries that are “hospitable” to foreign investment, while our neighbor in the south was ranked at the 50th place and the Northern neighbor, at the 60th. Even Vietnam, which can be said to have started from the same start-line as Mongolia, was ranked at the 59th and Kazakhstan, at the 64th. This points to the fact that no matter how soft the conditions our laws offer to the investors, it means that major investments would still run away from us unless we make policies that keep up with the geopolitical interests of the great powers. As a comparison, it’s worth mentioning that China made direct investment of USD 42.8 billion and loaned USD 50 billion to Kazakhstan last year.

What I mean to say by breaking down all of the above is that the future of major projects of Mongolia is uncertain until we unite our interests with those of the neighboring great powers by becoming integrated with the regional economic alliances. We will go further only when we deciphered the mystery of hyper-dependency of Mongolian economy on external factors and sluggishness when it comes to exploiting full internal resources for the last 28 years.”
For full speech, visit president.mn
https://president.mn/en/2018/05/22/president-battulga-delivers-speech-at-mef/