PRESIDENT OF MONGOLIA WELCOMES EU AMBASSADORS
President of Mongolia Khaltmaagiin Battulga received the Ambassadors of the European Union and its member states on November 1 in the State Palace.
Present at the meeting were, the Ambassadors of EU, Belgium, Finland, Austria, Slovak, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Hungary, Germany, France, Sweden, Malta, Latvia, Slovenia, Czech, Italy, Bulgaria, UK, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain and Denmark to Mongolia.
Beginning the meeting, President Battulga said “Good evening to the Ambassadors representing the European Union and its member states to Mongolia.” This year’s annual meeting of the President of Mongolia and the EU Ambassadors involved heads of a rather large number of diplomatic missions. “I am happy for today, the opening day of the EU Embassy in Mongolia which was under talks for the past four years,” he said.
According to the statistics of 2016, Mongolia’s annual trade turnover with EU countries totaled to about USD 1.2 billion, of which exports constituted USD 643 million and imports, the rest.
“This is not a large number for the Europen Union. I, myself, came from the business sector to politics. Therefore, I focus more on services and commerce,” the President noted.
Mentioning that “Mongolia has been granted with a great opportunity in terms of geography by being located between two great powers that attract the global attention”, the President suggested Mongolia can be introduced to European technology to process raw materials and export final products.
Another suggestion was about establishing joint processing factories for raw materials harvested from the ground and underground. President went on to state that Mongolia boasts a large-scale agricultural sector, but it has not been keeping up with the technological development.
At last, he highlighted some potential agreements have been set out between the Government of Mongolia and EU on exporting approximately 7,200 ranges of goods to EU.
After this, the President answered questions of the Ambassadors who also underlined there are excellent political ties between EU and Mongolia, but the economic ties still need to be strengthened.
The Agreement on Cooperation and Partnership of EU and Mongolia has been ratified by all 28 EU member states and entered into force on November 1, 2017.