“Securing private sector participation is crucial,” says ADB chief in Mongolia

Adrian H.Ruthenberg, Asian Development Bank Mongolia Country Director, tells   L.Bolormaa why mobilizing resources from the private sector will be essential to render ADB assistance even more effective.


The Asian Development Bank has been extending Mongolia various kinds of aid and also implementing projects here for a long time by. How do you assess the exercise?

Mongolia became an ADB member country in 1991.  ADB’s operations started the same year, and since then we’ve provided some $700 million in concessional loans and over $100 million in technical assistance and other grants. An independent evaluation of our assistance was undertaken in 2007 and concluded that it’s been successful overall. Achievements in social and transport sectors were recognized as particularly effective.

When we started our operations in Mongolia, our top priority was to keep essential infrastructure functioning -- such as heating, power supply, school and health facilities. With Mongolia moving away from being a transition economy to a full-fledged market economy over the last couple of years, providing assistance has become a lot more complex. Policy dialogue, resources mobilization, and capacity building have taken center stage, and our focus is to ensure our assistance is responsive to current challenges. For example, early this year we put our new country partnership strategy on ice to respond swiftly to the unfolding economic crisis. ADB allocated $60 million to social welfare reform to render welfare payments in a more targeted way to those who need it most – the poor.

This year we also processed a $17-million project to provide pre-school meals and text books to poor children. Another $24 million was allocated to finish construction of Mongolia’s most important transport corridor – the road from Sainshand to Zamyn Uud. All in all, we plan to provide over $170 million in project assistance for 2009 and 2010, half of which is in the form of grants and the remainder as highly concessional loans. On top of that we earmarked some $20 million for technical assistance grants and small projects targeted to help the poor. While this level of assistance is significant, it is small vis-а-vis the challenges and needs Mongolia is facing. Mobilizing resources from the private sector will be essential to render our assistance even more effective.

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