Mr President,
Mr Chairman
Distinguished delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

Mongolia is located in high altitude zone of the Central Asia and has a harsh climate. Agricultural production accounts for 30% of the Gross Domestic Production and livestock sector produces 90% of the total agricultural commodities.

Since 1990, Mongolia has been in transition from a centrally planned economy to a market one and during this period the population of livestock, owned by the State collectives was privatized to individual herders. Today total number of livestock population has reached 33.5 million heads. Favourable climatic conditions and a decline in export of meat and live animals have influenced on the increase of livestock population.

However, due to a drought and blizzard, taken place in the last two years, poverty and unemployment are getting major problems, facing a majority of rural herding households. By this severe natural disaster, a big damage has caused to our country’s economy and millions of animals have been lost.

Mongolia has around 200 000 herding families out of which 83.6% is considered as a poor herding households, living under the minimum subsistance level by having less than 200 heads of animals.

Today almost 90% of the total territory of Mongolia has been covered with more heavy snow than the average of many years and 68% of the total herding households and 63.8% of the total population of livestock have been affected by hard winter blizzard.

Taking into consideration the above situation, the Mongolian Government and the United Nations have launched a joint appeal to the international communities and donor countries.

I would like to take this opportunity to express the gratitude to the international communities and donor countries for their promise to help our government, following this appeal.

In order to relieve the damage in a short time, improve management of livestock production and to reduce risk, our government has elaborated the national program on establishing a natural disaster responding system.

Since transition to a market economy, crop production has gone down dramatically due to the shortage of good quality seed, financial weakness of crop farms, outdated techniques and technology and bad weather conditions.

Compared to 1990, the total arable land has been reduced by 3.2 times and wheat and vegetable production has been also declined by 5.1 times and 1.6 times respectively in 2000. 142.1 thousand tons of wheat was harvested in 2000. This volume of production meets only one third of the total flour demand and the remaining balance will be provided through import.

To halt crop production decline, our government has taken several measures, aimed to introduce new technology, improve seed quality and production management in the next two years.

The "Rural Poverty Alleviation" project, financed by IFAD, has been implemented successfully in two provinces. Under this project 39 000 animals have been provided to 1 360 poor herding households since 1997 as well as 2 400 poor households have been involved in vegetable component.

This IFAD-financed "Rural Poverty Alleviation" project has made a considerable contribution to the implementation of the national poverty alleviation program.

Finally I would like to say that our government seeks IFAD support for implementing its agriculture sector policy and objectives and hope that our cooperation will be fruitful.

Thank you for your attention.

A General Statement, made by H. E D. NASANJARGAL,
Member of the Government Cabinet and Minister of Food and Agriculture of Mongolia