Addressing a special Government meeting on Friday, Prime Minister S.Batbold listed among his principal achievements in the 155 days since assuming his present office, human resource development, approval of the budget, declaring 2010 as the year of business environment reforms, distribution of money from the Human Development Fund, arranging the Mongolian Economic Forum, and initiating policy reforms in the education, financial market and infrastructure sectors.

He said the Tavantolgoi issue will have to be decided soon and that Mongolian national interests will be at the forefront when an agreement is made with investors. The mega coal deposit will be fully owned by the State and investors will act as contract operators. New railroads, power stations and towns will be built, triggering national reconstruction. New factories will come up, national companies will be encouraged and thousands of jobs will be created. “We are aiming to manufacture processed products, instead of exporting the raw resources,” he added.

Talking about the new railway, the Prime Minister said the Government thinks

a west-east route from Tavantolgoi to Sainshand to Choibalsan will be best. “This road will open the possibility to develop broad economic relationship in Northeast Asia as well as providing guaranteed supply of infrastructure to coal, copper, uranium and oil reserves in Gobi region,” he said.

Developing Tavantolgoi will lead to setting up, along with extraction facilities, plants for enrichment and washing, constructing railways and load bearing motor roads, finding sources of water and energy, improving operations at border checkpoints, using sea ports abroad, and manufacturing value-added products.
Batbold said the national program on a “Smokeless Ulaanbaatar” will be implemented, as will be the one on “100,000 household apartments”. He hi9mself will head the committees to be in charge of implementing the program on Ulaanbaatar.

Ger districts will be made into apartment districts, with 75,000 apartments being built in 35 locations. About 70 percent of metropolitan citizens will then live in apartments.