Ulaanbaatar
OECD: Mongolia must tackle corruption
PoliticsUlaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has called on the government of Mongolia to combat the growing corruption problem. It was published Wednesday on the neurope.eu website.
As reported by the online news site Public Finance International, the central-Asian country is large, landlocked and sparsely populated. It is poor and its development has been very slow, but following the discovery of vast reserves of high-grade coal, as well as copper and gold, Mongolia has begun rapid social and economic development. The discovery of these extractives is expected to triple the country’s economy by 2020 and push millions of its people up into the global middle class, the OECD said.
In its report titled Anti-Corruption Reforms in Mongolia, the OECD notes that exploration of the country’s mineral resources only “exacerbated governance and corruption challenges” for the “fledgling democracy”.
“Mongolia has started a number of important reforms… but they are far from producing sustainable results,” it said.
The OECD calls on Mongolia to reject the introduction of any amnesty laws that would grant protection from prosecution for corruption or lead to termination of cases currently being investigated.
Other recommendations include adopting the new anti-corruption strategy without delay, bringing national legislation in line with international standards and reforming the civil service, political party financing and the judiciary.
