The New Year has come. If we Mongolians manage to measure and value correctly our achievement and development, it will be the first step in delivering economic growth of our country to every family. For example, how realistic is our GDP per capita? Because the election is coming up, authorities have been telling that every Mongolian is earning USD 3,000 a year and it will reach USD 5000 soon. GDP per capita is a statistical number, not a realistic one. For example, if a person’s income is 9999 and the other’s is 1, their average income is 5000. It is also a political indicator if there was growth in GDP per capita compared to the previous years. GDP per capita is a number that is far from the real lives of people and leaders of political parties are using this number too much and are trying to make people believe that Mongolia is rapidly developing under their administration too much.
Who created the mineral resources? The capacity of Mongolia’s economy is expanding not because of us or our political parties. It is just because China is developing very rapidly and their demand for mineral resources and raw materials has drastically gone up. Mineral resources were created for hundreds of millions of years by the Mother Nature and we are bragging only because we are just taking it out of the ground and selling it. In order to increase mining, we are buying more and more heavy equipment from other countries. That is why our foreign trade is growing and GDP is expanding. Actually the real value is being created by foreign countries that buy our raw materials, process them, make finished goods out of them and sell them back to us with a price 10 times higher.
Whoever in charge of mining gets a certain amount of profit after covering all their costs and the rest has to go to Mongolian citizens. It is because these natural resources were not created by the miner, but by nature, therefore every citizen of that country deserves a piece of the pie. But, how will people get their piece? This is a development matter and it will depend on how the development is measured. Mine owners, politicians and government officials are benefiting the most from the current economic development while almost a million people whose daily income is below MNT 3000 are barely experiencing the development. The basis for people, rich or poor, to benefit from development equally is infrastructure and, as by using infrastructure, every family will have an opportunity to work efficiently and have a better life. Therefore, development should be measured by life quality measures.
Many years ago there was a saying in Singapore: “ have one wife, two children, three room apartment, four wheel car, five digits salary” and they achieved it. Likewise, unless development is measured realistically and by results, Mongolian politicians are misleading people and measuring development by inputs line invested amount of money into projects, or cash handed over to people and budgetary spending figures. Do you remember a story where a distorting mirror reflects a poor man look large and rich and the man tries to crush that mirror? Making people believe in big, statistical numbers is only beneficial to politicians. Anyway, half of the investment disappears when the outcome is measured as the authorities conspire and defraud it. The outcome of big investments is so small that citizens cannot benefit from it.
If we measure our economic development by outcomes and results, our achievements will not be that high and there is absolutely no reason for being happy about it. Where does development of Mongolia start? The most urgent problem of development today is that Mongolia lacks infrastructure and workforce competitiveness. If we manage to determine what to do about it and correctly measure the progress of what we do, every family will start to benefit from economic development. We have not even decided where to build a new power station for 10 years while one third of population is still not connected to electricity. The government has not even increased capacity and performance of railroads that cannot handle export and import flows and it is going to be replaced after doing nothing but talking about big numbers and installing few poles.
It seems like an election syndrome that, when USD 5.2 billion is needed for a construction of transportation network in the south, they are trying to hand out the exact same amount of money to people in cash. The main reason that private companies in Ulaanbaatar are not able to fully use their capability is the lack of skills. According to a World Economic Forum survey, 93 percent of new employees in Mongolia think that they need trainings on information technology, administration and creativity thinking and more practice in order to fully complete their duties. Training costs to improve skills of employees could be tax exempt. We should research and find out skills needed in industries, adopt it in new curriculums of educational institutions and provide high and middle school students with technical and professional skills. Currently, only 10 percent of all students are involved in such trainings.
About 38% of 18-35 year olds left school without completing basic education therefore if a training to give them a “second chance” is organized, it will greatly help them to find a job. If we start doing all these and measure our work correctly, development will benefit everyone and the basis of rapid development will be firmly made. It will be the beginning for Mongolia to become competitive on the world market.
It is attention-catching that Mongolians are not living in the present, creating and accomplishing but living in the past, talking mostly about history and celebrating all possible anniversaries after anniversaries. Whom does it help if we are getting excited over statistical numbers, having celebrations instead of creating and drinking alcohol instead of working?