Mongolia has been a member of the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI) together with the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation since its inauguration in 2006. From 2018, GIZ and involved Mongolian actors started a series of stakeholder meetings between GTI focal points in Mongolia to strengthen the cooperation on regional integration within Mongolia and ultimately enhance the involvement of Mongolia in the GTI framework. The meetings were part of the interventions by the GIZ Support of Regional Economic Cooperation in Asia (SRECA) Project to strengthen Mongolia’s regional integration and cooperation efforts under the GTI Mechanism. The focus is lying on the improvement of quality and utility of Mongolian project proposals and to enhance the coordination of Mongolian GTI focal points engaged in regional cooperation under the GTI framework.

GIZ SRECA Programme, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, works with Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, PR China and Viet Nam in the context of sub-regional mechanisms such as the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) in Southeast Asia and the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI) in Northeast Asia. 

The workshop was the 4^th GTI Mongolia Stakeholders Meeting & GTI Soft Project Proposal Writing Training organised by GIZ SRECA and facilitated by Applicatio Training & Management GmbH. It took place in the GIZ Main Office Ulaanbaatar on 25-26 September 2019. In total 20 participants from all relevant stakeholders including Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Road and Transport Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry, Mongolian Customs General Administration, Development Bank of Mongolia, Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Institute for Strategic Studies under the National Security Council of Mongolia, Dornod, Khentii and Sukhbaatar provinces were present. Mr. B. Tuguldur, director of the GTI Secretariat was also attended in the workshop and presented about the GTI Funding.

During the training, participants learnt about main principles of soft project proposal application in the GTI context, utilisation of soft project proposal template, common problems of soft project application as well as budgeting and monitoring of soft project proposal cases. Moreover the workshop was served as a platform for active exchange on experiences and events in the past months, presenting and clarifying updated project proposals and learning from each other on further improvement of the project proposals and cooperation among GTI Mongolian Stakeholders.

For further information about the programme, please check https://connecting-asia.org/ and more information on GTI is available at http://www.tumenprogramme.org/ .