On February 8, Prime Minister S.Batbold met with representatives of wool and cashmere processing factories and listened to their position and suggestions for development of the sector.At the onset of the meeting,the Prime Minister said that the government announced 2001 as the ‘Year of promoting employment’ for a purpose to increase jobs and to support employment. He underlined that light industry, including wool and cashmere processing, might have more opportunities to be one of the strongest competitors in the market alongside with the mining sector, but this sector’s businessmen do not fully exploit these opportunities. “I want you to make more efforts by working out a unified policy and program and tackling the urgent problems, and to enhance your social responsibilities such as preparing trained staffers and creating job places,” he said.

The Prime Minister appreciated a proposal to collaborate and underlined that a non-government professional union and producers should make effort to realize this proposal. He obliged the Agricultural Minister T.Badamjunai and wool and cashmere producers to draw up and submit suggestions to the government on organizing the structure of the ‘Mongolian cashmere’ corporate for necessary support and participation of the government in this cooperative.

S.Batbold said the government can run its policy on limiting wool and cashmere products imports similar to the Value-Added Tax (VAT) on the import of flour and rice. He asked the gathered about specific requests the State is to realize and the opportunity to jointly establish a vocational training center of light industry with the State’s support.He also mentioned that the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) is spending much money on founding vocational training centers and preparing trained staffers, and criticized the Association of Wool and Cashmere Production for not forwarding its proposals to the MCA.Present at the meeting were executive directors of the ‘Eermel’,‘Buyan’, ‘Goyo’, ‘Altai Cashmere’,‘Sor Cashmere’, ‘Khanbogd Cashmere’companies; the ‘Erdenet Carpet’, ‘Mongol Eermel’ companies, officials from the Ministry of Food,Agriculture and Light Industry, the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Mongolia.

<< BACK