Consultation meeting of ger district re-development held
The Minister of Construction and Urban Development (MCUD) held a consultation meeting with project implementers of ger district re-development on February 1. Out of 204 khoroos in Ulaanbaatar, 82 districts are in ger district. There are a total of 43 khoroo, which are a mixture of ger district and apartment buildings. That totals 61 percent of the capital’s khoroos, or a total of 125 khoroos have gers and detached houses and as of today, 44 companies are working on projects in 58 partial areas of 19 locations. On top of the aforementioned data, information on what difficulties are arising during the project of re-planning and building the ger district was presented at the meeting by Head of the Ulaanbaatar Housing Policy Department G.Gankhuu.
During the meeting, the project implementing companies negotiated with the ger district citizens and 80 to 90 percent of the land acquisition work has been completed, but the works related to the lack of engineering network infrastructure, transfer of documents, and registration are slow. They also raised the common problem that projects are at risk of being stopped due to capital and financial problems such as high-interest rates on bank loans.
In addition, when it comes to building social infrastructure, in the tripartite communication documents it is unclear how to decide on the acquisition of land for schools and kindergartens if the companies decide to release funds from themselves. Then, there is no regulation for the government to recover those funds and re-planning and land allocations were made overlapping with the approved areas. Therefore, the enterprises have asked the MCUD to pay attention to the creation of infrastructure resources and investment solutions and direct the financing of mortgage loans to the redevelopment of residential areas.
Minister Ts.Davaasuren pointed out that the construction companies have a lot of burden on the re-planning work of the residential area, but it is important to make it well understood at the decision-making level and to work in coordination between sectors and at different levels. In order to solve these problems, the following directions were given:
• Since it takes a lot of time to decide on infrastructure sources, it is better to build a new power plant, so the most optimal solution is to decide on independent sources
• Pay attention to help decision-making level or members of Parliament to understand and convey the 245 billion MNT worth of infrastructure investment issue
• Land allotment should be done according to the integrated general plan
• In terms of financing schemes, consider discount loans rather than just mortgages
• Look for green solutions against air and environmental pollution, for example, pay attention to using high-efficiency solutions similar to the heat supply solutions of countries such as Denmark and Finland
• On the issue of land for the construction of schools and kindergartens, it is necessary to vacate land for social infrastructure
• State institutions should pay attention to work efficiently and without bureaucratic implementation of the transfer when it comes to preparation of tripartite agreement documents, and coordinate their activities
• During the implementation of the project, it is necessary to pay attention to the direction of not exporting foreign currency and to support the production of construction materials that meet a certain percentage of domestic needs with import taxes
The Ministry’s management team was headed by Minister of Construction and Urban Development T.Davaasuren along with participation from Deputy Minister E.Zolboo, Secretary of State S.Magnaisuren, Deputy Mayor of Ulaanbaatar J.Sandagsuren, Director of the Capital City Policy Research and Analysis Center R.Dagva and relevant officials of the Capital land managers and representatives of more than 40 enterprises working on the project of re-planning the ger district also participated.