At an irregular cabinet meeting on April 2, the government resolved to issue Tgs1.5 million to every citizen. To accomplish this, Tgs 1 million will be delivered by covering retirement pensions and health insurance premiums for people, issuing vouchers for education, health services, apartment purchases, and Tgs 500,000 given in cash over 2011 and 2012.

Retirement pension and health insurance premiums

Covering payments of retirement pension and health insurance premium shall be applied to herdsmen, private businessmen and the unemployed who have not been involved in pension insurance scheme. According to the law on health insurance, all population must be involved in health insurance. However, there have been a number of people who have no health insurance. Therefore, it will cover four-year payments of pension and health insurance premiums for those people, opening the rights to receive medical and social care services for them.

Health service

A voucher representing a specific amount of money will be given to people to ensure they receive a one-time, comprehensive medical examination, test treatment, and vaccinations for preventing infectious diseases.

Educational service

A voucher will be issued to people and students to cover tuition fees at higher educational institutions and for general secondary school children in grades 1-12 to receive stationeries, books and uniforms free of charge. Moreover, unemployed people may attend vocational training centers with this voucher.

Payment for purchasing an apartment

A specific voucher will be issued to make advance payments for loans and loan interest in cases of apartment purchases.

Also discussed at the cabinet meeting was the exploitation of the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit. The cabinet approved a new composition of the Working Group responsible for establishing the agreement with investors to exploit the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit and drawing up a draft of the agreement. The Working Group is to be headed by the Minerals and Energy Minister. The Ministers of Finance and Environment and Tourism will work as deputy heads. The Working Group is also comprised of heads of ministries offices and other officials.

Exploitation of the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit is believed to bring great significance for solving a number of issues and create new opportunities to establish plants that extract, concentrate and wash coal, construct rail and auto roads, create new sources of water supply and energy, sell products, increase the capacity of border checkpoints, use sea ports of neighboring countries, and to produce value-added products.

The Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit is one of best studied deposits in Mongolia. A preliminary feasibility study was conducted several times. According to internationallyaccepted means for identifying the size of the resource, the deposit’s resource may increase. It is possible to extract 15-30 million tonnes of coal a year depending on transportation and water supply.

Soon, the Mongolian side and investors will discuss the issues of ways to ensure the power supply at the first stage of construction, the key stage of extraction, on the capability of power stations to be erected and on the terms of investment and financing.

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