Ulaanbaatar, 6 October 2021 – Aligning budgets with the development priorities and the SDGs, i.e. the implementation of the results-based budgeting is a vital component to channel the available financial resources to the policy priorities and increase the efficiency of the state budgets, hence enabling Mongolia to meet its national SDGs targets.

UNDP Mongolia has been collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Science (MOES) since 2018 to introduce the results-based budgeting, starting with the education sector expenditure review, followed by a pilot of results-based budgeting for education sector programmes, such as pre-school education, primary and secondary education, and life-long education.

This year, the pilot focused on renewing the sectoral budget Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), aligning the budget expenditure with policy, and applying evidence-based policy budgeting, within the framework of the UN Joint Programme ‘Rolling out an integrated approach to the SDGs financing in Mongolia’ (UNJP) implemented by the UNDP and UNICEF, in partnership with the UNFPA. 

In order to strengthen the capacity of the education sector professionals to make data-driven decisions and evidence-based policies, the UNJP commenced a month-long training workshop ‘“Data analysis on education sector KPIs for results-based budgeting”, co-organised with the MOES, for about 150 education sector professionals from 18 aimags and 9 districts. 

Mr. J.Ganbaatar, Director-General of Policy and Planning Department at the MOES, said ‘MOES is proud to be one of the RBB pilot ministries, even sharing experiences at regional level. The data analysis training will help support the RBB capacity and is setting the foundation for education sector professionals to become data analysts.’

Ms. Nashida Sattar, Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP Mongolia highlighted in her opening remarks that “Data-driven and evidence-based policy decisions are essential to choose from different policy options, monitor its impact and link the financial decisions with the policy priorities, hence contributing to the achievement of the education sector goals.”

Strengthening capacity for evidence-based policies is especially important as some of the progresses gained in the education sector are reversing such as the percentage of children not attending grades 1-9 increased from 1.6% to 2.9% from 2016 to 2020, and the quality of and access to education is further challenged by the pandemic. Evidence-based policies will serve as the foundation for aligning policies with budget and monitoring the development results against the policies implementation and budget performance, hence enabling the achievement of the education sector goals and the SDGs.

Read more about the UN Joint programme here: https://bit.ly/3Bkq5Av

For further inquiries:

Soyolmaa Dolgor

Development Coordination Officer for Communications and Advocacy

UN Resident Coordinator Office

Tel: 11 327585 ext. 1007

Mobile: +976 94111220

Email: soyolmaa.dolgor@un.org