New center to evaluate country’s competitive worth

The Director of the newly established Economic Policy and Competitiveness Research Center, Ch. Otgochuluu, says the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed with the Global Competitiveness Research Center in Switzerland will help fulfill the desire of President Ts.Elbegdorj that a Mongolian institute should take up the job of analyzing and evaluating the status of the country’s competitiveness.

This is something that is now done by only foreign organizations, but the results of such studies, by the World Bank and other international organizations, sometimes vary significantly as they use different methodologies. Also many organizations, particularly in the government, have a tendency to provide inaccurate estimates of their human resources capacity, either because of insufficient data or because they wish to protect their status.

In most countries such evaluation and monitoring work is done by the civil society and independent professionals but no similar practice has so far emerged in Mongolia, even though it is an essential demand in a market economy. Now things will change, Otgochuluu hopes, as the center will conduct independent studies using internationally accepted methodologies and standards with the help of the Swiss institute, which has already produced competitiveness reports for 50 developed countries so far.
Their experts are already here and working with Mongolians on identifying relevant competitiveness indicators such as the government’s capacity to formulate policy, the legal environment, the state of infrastructure, etc. Some 300 indicators will be identified and analyzed to produce a comprehensive report.