PM gives speech to Best Herders Conference

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Prime Minister of Mongolia Ch.Saikhanbileg addressed the Conference of 800 Best Herders on March 17. The event has been co-organized by the Government, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). In the recent years, he said, many successes have been achieved by the agricultural industry, a number of livestock has risen to 56 million thanks to the herders' hard work and dedication. According to the census by the end of 2015, Mongolia counted the most number of horses, goats and sheep in its history, he added. The Premier talked about the recently adopted State Policy on Food and Agriculture. This many-sided policy aims at resolving many issues, including improving the productivity, efficiency and commercial capabilities of animal husbandry, building the adapting capacity to climate change and disaster risks, maintaining the originality of traditional livestock herding, recording and enriching the know-how, conducting the animal breeding and selection with accounts of scientific studies and market demand, preventing contagious diseases, implementing nationwide vaccination, establishing an economic leverage for designing the amount, structure and types of livestock herds in respect to the study on pastoral land capacity, and enhancing the water supply of grazing lands. The state, in the margin of wide range of measures and policy actions for promoting the livestock herding community, is allowing benefits on the hides and wools of sheep and camel being sold to state-run factories, he went on. The government has been working to sign as many agreements as possible with foreign countries on meat export, and licensed 66 entities to export meat within 2015 and the first half of 2016. In 2015, 12 Mongolian companies exported 4,714.6 tons of meat to four countries, while in 2016, so far, over 420 tons of meat were exported, informed Mr Saikhanbileg.