MONGOLIA: Herdsmen Learn A Lesson Or Two About Market Economy

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

ALTANBULAG, Mongolia, Jul 17 1998 (IPS) - Anxiety is written all over Tumurkhuyag’s face as he watches strangers take their pick off a sampling plate and start to munch.

“How’s the cheese?” asks the 45-year-old former herdsman who now manages the Altanbulag cheese factory here in southern Mongolia. Wonderful, the visitors reply almost in unison, and Tumurkhuyag grins.

“I am very keen to get people’s opinions because they will be helpful to improve the quality,” he says. “I want the cheese we make to be world class.”

Such sentiments would have been unheard of just a decade ago in this remote town in southern Mongolia. But since this Central Asian country embarked on market reforms almost 10 years ago, concerns like that of Tumurkhuyag are becoming more common.

And while the transition from a Soviet-style system has been painful for most Mongolians, the enthusiasm and determination of people like Tumurkhuyag only show that there remains a bright side despite the hardship wrought by the changes.

The former socialist country had taken a democratic turn in 1990, effectively ending the steady Soviet support that had kept its economy going for 72 years. Almost overnight, state subsidies disappeared and state-owned companies closed down, while privately run businesses were encouraged.

But with 80 percent of the population made up of herdsmen used to subsidies and the ways of collective farms, the task of learning the skills to become an entrepreneur or an employee bereft of a social safety net has not been easy.

The surprise is that many of Mongolia’s fledging businessmen and private company workers insist the experience is refreshing. Take Baraduuz, 59, who in 1992 leased from the government a tiny plot of land near an oasis in the Gobi desert.

A Moscow University graduate, Baraduuz has since been planting onions, carrots and 20 other kinds of vegetables and fruits that he sells to tourist camps that have mushroomed in the area.

He earns some four million tughriks (about 3,000 dollars) a year, a handsome sum compared to the average 50-dollar monthly salary received by government officials and teachers.

The strongly built and sunburnt Baraduuz himself worked as a local government official for 15 years before he decided to grow vegetables full-time. “My health was affected because I got no exercise as an official,” he says. “I got into agriculture to improve my health and also because there was a possibility to earn more after the introduction of market-style reforms.”

Indeed, as the government is forced to reduce the national budget for education and health, state-paid jobs such as doctors, teachers and petty bureaucrats have become less attractive to the average Mongolian.

Instead, almost everyone wants to become a businessman because it would mean better chances in coping with the problems brought by the economic transition. Last year, Mongolians had to contend with consumer prices that increased an average of 7.3 percent each month while their real income decreased by 30 percent.

This was largely why former city-based doctor Byambajav, 46, and her family are now living in a ‘ger’ (tent house) in the middle of the vast, windswept Gobi.

Byambajav says her large collection of sheep, goats, camels and horses provides her family with security for the future because she can sell the milk, hides and wool for cashmere.

“As a doctor, I can only rely on my salary or pension, which can buy me very little in today’s Mongolia because everything is so expensive,” she says. “We now we have to pay for medicine, clothing, which we took for granted before the market economy.”

Apparently, though, Byambajav is only one among many Mongolians now raising livestock as their main livelihood. As a result, Mongolia now has more animals than people – four million livestock as against 2.4 million Mongolians. This situation, in turn, is causing environmental problems, including desertification due to overgrazing.

Economists say the only solution — apart from economic growth, which is taking its time to happen — is more investment into projects that focus on developing irrigation as well as industries that would allow people to see the benefit of using less number of animals for greater financial gains.

Meanwhile, international aid donors have also stepped in to help ease the transition for Mongolians living as far as the remote interiors of the rugged Gobi to the urban centres.

The small cheese-making company that employs Tumurkhuyag got started with help from the United Nations Development Programme and a 200,000-dollar loan from the Dutch government. Set up in 1996, Byasalag — Mongolia’s first cheese manufacturer — gave work to the 15 herdsman families who had been thrown out of Hustt