U.S. Ambassador Jonathan Addleton has stressed that “successful businesses bring development, add jobs, strengthen people-to-people relationships and provide the revenues needed to fund needed health and education services”. The U.S. Embassy would “do everything within our power” to support the private sector in “deepening and sustaining a positive relationship between our countries”.

Speaking at the recent opening ceremony of Wagner-Asia’s new agricultural equipment facility at Darkhan, the Ambassador said the growth of the company’s operations in Mongolia over the last ten years “represents a true success story, one that benefits both Mongolia and the United States”. The company now employs some 300 people – and 295 of them are Mongolian.

Addleton felt it was “significant” that the new center would help introduce products of new American companies to the Mongolian market, and it would be focusing on agriculture, as “mineral rich economies should not be one-dimensional economies; rather, they need to diversify and expand in other directions”.

He hoped “efforts like this” would in the coming years help raise significantly the volume of Mongolia-U.S. bilateral trade, currently standing at around USD150 million annually.