Ladies and Gentlemen, Esteemed partners and colleagues,

Thank you very much to the Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association for organizing this forum event and the series of special expert workshops. This is a great opportunity for us - the Government, private sector and development partners to come together and discuss the way forward for financing sustainable development in Mongolia.

World leaders have made ambitious commitments to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including important areas of climate change, green economic development, gender equality, and overall social development. Yet, securing enough resources remains a significant challenge, with developing countries, including Mongolia facing a financial gap. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically set back progress on sustainable development, exposing and exacerbating inequalities among people. The pandemic and economic crisis have aggravated debt and other vulnerabilities and disproportionately impacted women, youth, the poor, and those informally employed.

UNDP is globally more engaged and focused in recent years in the financing for development and financial policy reforms that will enable the financing and achievement of SDGs. We focus more on private sector engagement, as they have the highest potential to contribute and be the decisive factor in whether we can achieve our goals or not.

I would like to emphasize and acknowledge the Government of Mongolia, in particular the Ministry of Finance for your leadership on the work on INFF and the public financial sector reform. The recent PEFA report by World Bank showed significant progress on Mongolia’s public finance accountability and expenditure. In particular, the SDG-aligned results-based budgeting pilot under the leadership of MOF has been expanded to 4 sectoral ministries this year, and in addition to two ministries piloting gender-responsive budgeting for the first time. 

UNDP is continuing our support to the Ministry of Finance on SDG aligned results based budgeting reform with special thanks to the European Union. As part of the EU direct budget support to Mongolia, UNDP is providing technical assistance on budget and employment sector reform through a 4 year, 7.4 million euro project on Transforming employment sector through SDG-aligned budgeting.   

The implementation of such reform builds a robust and solid base for sustainable development financing strategy to work, direct the available financial resources to the SDGs and increase the efficiency and impact of the financial resources. This also includes gender mainstreaming in the financial sector and it would be important to bring in the important role that women play also in today’s discussions. 

I would like to emphasize and express my appreciation to the Central Bank of Mongolia for including inclusive growth and sustainable financing into the Monetary Policy Guidelines for 2022, recently approved by the Parliament. It included comprehensive set of measures planned towards sustainable financing and is an expression of commitment and support from the Central bank. 

I also would like to highlight that the Financial Regulatory Commission, as the financial markets regulator in Mongolia, is actively working towards creating a sustainable financing environment for private sector. In particular, Financial Regulatory Commission approved the green bond issuance regulations this July and is currently working with the Mongolian Stock Exchange on introducing ESG reporting standards in Mongolian capital markets. 

UNDP in Mongolia is further working on a number of initiatives that are directed towards enhancing financing for sustainable development and mobilising private sector capital.

UNDP within the UN joint programme on sustainable financing is assisting the GOM- Ministry of Finance to develop an Integrated national financing framework and integrated financing strategy, in line with the global recommendations that came out of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which will be presented by the Deputy Minister today. 

The integrated financing framework will support countries to create more alignment between policies and financing and enhance opportunities for financing the SDGs. It provides a path for financing national development plans and strategies and contributing to creating the economic and business environment, where financing decisions are made with consideration for SDG impact. UNDP is globally placing significant emphasis on the creation of the INFF and its implementation as a dynamic process.

UNDP within the framework of UN Joint Programme on Sustainable financing, is developing SDG finance taxonomy expanding the Green taxonomy approved by the Financial Stability Board in 2019, to include socially and economically sustainable economic activities. This will be a critical step towards tracking financing for SDGs and then creating necessary policy incentives to further encourage financing for SDGs. 

UNDP is proud to partner with all other stakeholders including Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association, the Development Bank of Mongolia, National Audit Office, Mongolian stock exchange, banks, international organisations and private sector representatives such as the chambers of commerce that are contributing significantly towards creating a sustainable financial system in Mongolia.

I look forward to our collaborations and joint efforts in accelerating financing and achievement of SDGs in Mongolia. Thank you very much!