Cabinet proposes to distribute Child Money to every child

Currently, only 80 percent of children under the age of 18 receive the monthly Child Money from the government. Minister of Finance Ch.Khurelbaatar announced that Cabinet has allocated 218 billion MNT in the 2019 state budget to distribute money to up to 912,000 children.

The finance minister said at a meeting at the Ulaanbaatar Economics Club on October 4 that Cabinet would be distributing 20,000 MNT to every child that filed a request to receive the money. Previously, Cabinet had spent 164 billion MNT to distribute Child Money to 684,000 children.

As part of the extended fund facility with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Cabinet implemented certain austerity measures. This included reducing the number of children receiving Child Money allowances.

While the proposal has been included by Cabinet, it is still subject to the approval of Parliament, which is in the process of discussing the 2019 fiscal budget. In the 2019 state budget draft, 720 billion MNT was allocated for salary, pension, and welfare increases.

“We researched the global economic projections in 2019 in detail while drafting the 2019 fiscal budget. IMF predicts that the global economy will grow by 3.9 percent but then reduced it by 0.2 percentage points, making it 3.7 percent. We drafted the state budget based on this projection. Copper on the global market is forecast to be 7,200 USD per ton in 2019, but we calculated the price to be 6,200 USD. Overall budget revenue is planned to be relatively high but we believe we can achieve it,” said Minister of Finance Ch.Khurelbaatar.