Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/.  The government of Mongolia, on April 8, Thursday, decided to impose a nationwide strict lockdown between April 10 and 25 by moving into the Red Level of heightened state of emergency readiness in order to contain the rising spread of COVID-19 in the country and also to provide a one-time cash grant of MNT 300,000 to each of Mongolia’s around 3.3 million population. 

Following the announcement, the Office of the President of Mongolia Battulga Khaltmaa issued a press release that the Mongolian President sent an official letter to Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai the same day. 

In his letter, the President emphasized that he had put forward his initiative of distributing support of MNT 1 million for each household to the State Great Khural and the government of Mongolia several times since November 2020 with a view to promoting livelihoods, national manufacturers, and businesses, and to keeping workplaces in these difficult times of the pandemic and lockdown measures. 

The proposal of President Battulga sets out to allocate MNT 1 million to each household of Mongolia, of which MNT 200,000 is expected to be distributed in cash and the remaining 800,000 in form of vouchers for purchasing goods and products, except for alcohol and tobacco, only from national producers. 

The President’s letter also praises the government’s decision to provide MNT 300,000 of support to each citizen ahead of another nationwide strict lockdown in order to maintain the livelihood of the population whose financial and employment opportunities are restricted by the pandemic. 

“However, taking under consideration the ongoing vaccination drive, which is expected to continue until August this year, it appears that one-time MNT 300,000 of cash grant cannot serve as a support sufficient enough to overcome the financial problems and other difficulties caused by the pandemic and resetting the stable operations of businesses,” the letter reads. 

“The law enforcement and jurisdiction have identified and revealed certain officials’ illegal assets worth around MNT 4 trillion hidden in offshore accounts and the grounds for recovering those assets have been prepared. Using this money, MNT 1 million of monthly allowance can be granted to each household until the end of August and with the help of this allowance, domestic manufacturers and businesses receive the support they need as well. Therefore, I ask you to cooperate with me to expose illegal actions and corruption, restoring the illegal assets to the state budget revenues and to curb the pandemic by supporting the population livelihoods and maintaining the employment.”