Democratic Party criticizes 2020 budget
On Monday, Parliament’s Democratic Party Council held a press conference, and presented its conclusions on the 2020 state budget. The press conference was led by Head of the council D.Erdenebat and MP B.Purevdorj. The Democratic Party, as a minority voice in Parliament, generally criticized the state budget proposal.
D.Erdenebat said “preliminary” conclusion of the party’s view of the state budget is that it emphasizes too much on political agendas of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), and loses its focus on the Mongolian government’s united policy, and called the budget “bloated.” After mentioning several statistical figures in the state budget, namely the generation of budget income, the budget expects an increase of 37.1 percent in income from taxes, 41.6 percent increase in social insurance fees, an increase of 11.7 percent from customs tax, among others.
The Democratic Party lawmaker explained that the 37.1 percent increase of income generated from income taxes is “too optimistic,” citing the record-breaking projection of 42 million tons of coal exported. He said this amount of coal has never been exported before, and is intentionally bloated to serve to politically benefit MPP. In addition, expenditure is also seen as bloated as well. The Democratic Party members state that the state budget is a document specifically designed for elections.
He also explains that this sudden hike in budget expenditure is also unprecedented, and it is twice as much as the budget expenditure of 2015. The lawmaker also stressed the fact that museum and theater construction has an allocated budget of 447.2 billion MNT, and believes it will only serve to demolish some of these buildings, and the date of their reconstruction, however, is unknown.
Specifically, 152 billion MNT is allocated to the proposed National Arts Theater, and 53 billion MNT is allocated for the proposed Chinggis Khaan Museum. A 10 billion MNT in funding is dedicated to constructing a national library. He pointed out the 128 million
MNT budget for buying bikes in the countryside as a glaring evidence for his claims of MPP attempting to ease the public during elections next year. Funding such as this, he believes, should be removed altogether from the budget.
B.Purevdorj said, “The government and national debt is extremely high. In 2016, [DP] left majority seats of Parliament with 24 billion USD in debt,” and says this number is now at 30 billion USD. He also warns of wasting state funds, citing the debated issue of allocating too much funding to a single province.
For example, “one village” in Khentii Province has a funding of 27 billion MNT, which is almost twice as much funding compared to even some provinces. He also reiterated the inaccurate income projections, especially from mineral exports. “Copper price is already falling. Mineral price fluctuations are cyclical, and its down cycle has begun.”
The Democratic Party Council Head D.Erdenebat warned of the possibility of constitutional amendments having to go through the Constitutional Court of Mongolia due to the “skipped” referendum. He said the second review of the constitutional amendments has passed and Parliament began its preparation for the third review without public approval. He then laid out three proposals from the Democratic Party, nomination of the president from Parliament, a mixed form of election system, and allow the prime minister to form his own Cabinet.
On the question of the Democratic Party view on punishing financial institutions for Mongolia’s inclusion in the “grey list” of the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF), B.Purevdorj said factors such as the “60 billion MNT” case, and Mongolian officials with inadequate foreign language skills were presenting Mongolia’s case at the FATF meeting caused FATF to categorize Mongolia as an uncooperative country. He also said the MPP is “unable to” punish Cabinet for it, and believes Minister of Justice Ts.Nyamdorj should be held accoutable for this ordeal.
Parliament’s MPP caucus will hold their meeting some time this week.