The 30% rise in salaries and
pensions will take effect on  October 30
and will apply to  148,223 government
employees. Parliament has included MNT78.2 billion on this account in the budget.
The money is expected to come from the next installment of the Oyutolgoi
advance payment. According to B.Nyamaa, director of Expense Department of
Budget Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance, the cost of the increase
will amount to MNT300 billion next year. What effect it will have on prices
remains to be seen.

The budget also has to
provide for distribution of the motherland allowance. If a family has five
members, and one of them is a state employee, it will receive MNT50,000 per
month from the Human Development Fund and the 30 percent rise in one person’s
salary. The average salary now is MNT300,000, so the average rise will be
MNT90,000. This means the income of the family will be up by MNT120,000. That
is a tidy sum for an individual family but it is anybody’s guess how much of
this will be eaten up by the anticipated price rise.

One can only hope that the
nation in general does not end up suffering because government employees had to
be satisfied.