According to foreign and domestic experts, economy of Mongolia was USD 6 billion in 2010 will be USD 8 billion in 2011 and will reach USD 40 billion expanding to five times its size within 10 years.Even though it will be a still an economy driven by investment in mineral development, production and processing over many years to come, other industrial and service sectors will develop rapidly. If political stability, and fair and transparent legal environment are provided, and all related infrastructure is put in operation, every Mongolian can live as prosperous as today’s Singapore in only 10 years.
It means that every family will live in an apartment with tapped water with no need to go after water,and two thirds of the population will be able to accumulate most of their income for future use, spending a smaller part of income for daily consumption. For reaching that level of living standards, every Mongolian professional’sskills and productivity should be internationally competitive.Aren’t we able to do this in this globalization era when we have the half of the population aged under 30, a huge, worldwide recognized pool of mineral resources, no foreign pressure and no religious or ethnic conflicts?
If we can attract smartly foreign investments in order to add more value to our mineral resources as much as we can, organize our economy in such a way that every family benefits from the mineral resources directly or indirectly, each person is motivated to be rich, Mongolia will soon become a country where foreigners dream to travel or to come to work.
We have such a beautiful nature if only air pollution in Ulaanbaatar is solved and rivers are saved.In order to provide political stability, political parties must be developed and strengthened as institutions and members of those parties must realize that the high public positions they get after winning elections are not a tool to get rich, but an honor to serve the people.Although this might sound very far from reality in today’s Mongolia, it is the first and foremost condition for good governance. We Mongolians are asking ourselves if we are waiting for a new political power to emerge or expecting the two big parties, which have been ruling Mongolia separately or together, to mature as an institution.Mongolians now have an opportunity to make a historical choice of replacing today’s politicians who are stealing public properties for themselves and changing thepolitical system where it is too vague for people to know who makes decisions, who implements them, or who are responsible for the consequences.
A new political power to emerge is not necessarily to be better than the current ones. Nevertheless, if laws passed in the last 20 years are fully enforced, chances of politicians to steal and embezzle will considerably decrease. Plus public governance is becoming a bit more transparent under the demand of citizens for last years anyway. People require better public governance also because Mongolians are currently seeing what government must not be doing in the real case.Failure of implementation of laws and conflict of interest are the main reasons whya stable, fair and transparent legal environment is not established in Mongolia. Government officials in charge of licenses for mining or public property management, or public investment in public project, or public procurement of goods and services are the mostly those who is plotting with politicians to steal and benefit from public properties because all related laws are being avoided or interpreted differently and somehow not being implemented.The government of Mongolia is currently not able to stop it and does nothing but speak fancy wordsin the country and abroad.
Laws are not implemented no matter how hard people demand for it; therefore, they will use their last tool, the upcoming election, to replace every single person who is stealing from what belongs to public. The basic requirement for economic development is to implement infrastructure projects planned such as building power stations, roads, railways and new international airport and tostart using them and as soon as possible.However, governance in Mongolia is not transparent and does not report to public the result, thus, a great amount of time is wasted as politicians behind each project try to negotiate their personal interests while people and businesses with no political connection lose time and money.One example is the fate of Thermal Energy Station 5 project, which has currently taken 20 years to only decide where to build it. Preparing internationally competitive professionals in Mongolia is linked with both individual efforts and competitiveness and quality of every educational institution.Educational institutions in Mongolia are not interconnected enough with industrial and service companies.
We are bringing foreign workforceto Mongoliabecause Mongolian universities are not supplying the needed professionals to labor market. That is the reason why so many Mongolians are still going abroad to do physical hard work. As our economy grows rapidly, there is a demand for tens of thousandsof workforce from developed countries to work in Mongolia. Furthermore, it seems that there is also a need to import more service labor to meet their high standard demand in accommodation, working and living conditions, food and public transportations.Otherwise, if many highly paid foreign executives and professionals come to Mongolia, there will be moreservicesgenerating high incomes, which means many Mongolian companies will be able to have good,permanent business. That is how Mongolia, like Singapore, can become a regional center, especially Asian center for mining industry.
Lack of professional workforce is becoming Mongolia’s biggest risk. Having responsible politicians, transparent governance, laws that are justly enforced and good universities all depend on people’s participation, effort and demand.Life of drowningman is first of all in hand of that man himself.