ADB-Mongolia Partnership Strategy

Mongolia urgently needs to restore macroeconomic stability to ensure social stability, and to develop in the longer term a more resilient and diversified economy that can consistently deliver rapid, inclusive, and sustainable growth. Small and medium-sized enterprises must play a greater role to promote diversification and job creation, particularly in developing value chains for Mongolia’s unique agricultural resources. The economic downturn underscores the need to strengthen social protection. Rapid and unplanned urbanization, poorly regulated development of the mining sector, and climate change impacts are causing significant environmental degradation that needs to be arrested to make growth more sustainable.

The country partnership strategy, 2017–2020 of ADB for Mongolia addresses key development challenges by supporting investments, policy reforms, capacity building, and knowledge sharing to sustain inclusive growth in a period of economic difficulty.  To achieve this, ADB will base its operations on three strategic pillars: 
(i) promoting economic and social stability, 
(ii) developing infrastructure for economic diversification, and 
(iii) strengthening environmental sustainability. 

The uncertainties of Mongolia’s current economic situation and the all-encompassing nature of these strategic pillars require greater flexibility in programming and focus on a wider set of sectors than is typical of ADB’s smaller developing member countries. Selectivity will nevertheless remain high through the application of strict selection criteria based on comparative advantage and value addition.