Support to poverty and millennium development goals/ Monitoring and Assessment system project MON/05/201

The report prepared by: Batkhishig B (Ph.D), Consultant, PMMS project; and reviewed by: Saurabh Sinha (Ph.D), Senior Economist and Tsetsgee Puntsag, Programme Officer, UNDP Mongolia

Why Poverty and MDGs monitoring systems in Mongolia?

Before 2004 there was no functional poverty monitoring system in Mongolia, but a considerable amount  of data had been collected was relevant for purposes of poverty monitoring. The central problem of poverty monitoring in Mongolia was not lack of data, the core problem was the lack of coordination and use of monitoring information to inform decision-making.

In April 2004, UNDP supported establishment of Poverty Research Group in the Ministry of Finance and Economy to implement and coordinate poverty related policy studies. When the Mongolian Parliament endorsed the Resolution #25 in 2005 that calls for actions to achieve Mongoliaspecific MDGs and monitoring of these actions, operational scope of the Poverty Research Group was scaled up including studies related to MDGs.

Furthermore, with the Parliamentary endorsement of Mongolia-specific MDGs, the government was mandated to report to UN Assembly every two years the country’s progress towards MDG achievement. To link planned measures to achieve the MDGs and anticipated results to actual achievements, there was an urgent demand for a system to monitor and evaluate the process to achieve MDGs. Recognizing such demand, UNDP extended its support to the Government of Mongolia to enhance its capacity for monitoring of MDGs and poverty reduction programming.

What is MDGs and poverty monitoring and evaluation?

The terms “monitoring” and “evaluation” are variously defined and sometimes used interchangeably, but their functions are quite different. MDG Monitoring is the routine process of tracking what progress is achieved towards fulfilling 24 targets of 9 MDGs in Mongolia. It should provide information on whether interventions towards achieving each goal are on track. For example, whether it is reaching the desired number of children enrolled in primary education or increasing percentage of children covered by immunization against measles (UNICEF, 2009).

Poverty monitoring system is needed to track the progress along poverty-related indicators to gauge pro-poor policies and programmes and to see whether resources are allocated to areas with the highest poverty reduction potential and are efficiently utilized. Evaluation is meant to measure the changes that result from MDGs and poverty reduction programme activities over time. One such example is evaluating the effects of primary school feeding programmes by measuring changes in the nutritional status of participating children. All ountries should implement MDG monitoring to track services, beneficiaries and resources used.