Opening Remarks by Ms. Elaine Conkievich

Resident Representative, UNDP Mongolia

“Poverty and inequality during Covid-19 using big data” study report– 8 July 2021

Mr. Batdavaa Batmunkh, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,

I am pleased to welcome you all to the virtual unveiling of our joint research study report “Mongolia: Poverty and inequality during COVID-19 using big data,” conducted in partnership with the National Statistical Office (NSO), the National University of Mongolia (NUM), the Ministry of Finance, and Information Technology Center for Custom, Taxation, and Finance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated into health and socio-economic crises across the globe. In many countries, during the earlier days of pandemic, the lockdowns resulted into decrease in spending, increasing in poverty, and exacerbated inequalities. During times of crises, timely and reliable data is essential for supporting the decision-makers to make policies that are relevant and effective in providing relief to affected groups of the population. It can be shown that well developed and effective policy responses helped countries in tackling crises in many ways.

In this regard, UNDP and NSO collaborated with national academia and the government agencies to conduct this pilot research to examine the impact of COVID-19 on consumption, poverty, and inequality in Mongolia in 2020 by using big data – the data generated by the Value-Added Tax (VAT) E-system. This is the first time that big data generated from value-added tax (VAT) records is being used for research and analysis to generate alternative estimates of poverty and inequality in the country.

The work has provided us an opportunity to understand the changes in household spending in Mongolia due to COVID-19 related shocks to the economy. Most importantly, it has showed how VAT data can be used to track changes in spending, poverty, and inequality much more frequently than was possible until now.

The results seem to suggest that on average, households’ spending increased during the pandemic year of 2020, while poverty and inequality of spending slightly declined. This could be explained by a large social protection fiscal stimulus and related spending. Thus, the study concludes that the shock of the pandemic on household spending, especially that of the poorest 40 percent of the households was softened by an economic stimulus package introduced in April 2020. Though the methodology employed by this study differs with the historical measures of poverty and inequality, the results employing big data can be useful. It may present an opportunity for the researchers and policy makers seeking ways to analyze poverty, inequality, and the impacts of shocks when opportunities for traditional data collection are severely restricted.

For today’s event we have planned a highly engaging panel discussion with leading experts about the opportunities and challenges in employing big data for the purpose of socio-economic assessment. The discussion we expect will provide insights into what we could do better to address key challenges in harnessing the potential of big data analytics in Mongolia especially for tracking changes in spending, poverty and inequality. I hope you look forward as I do to the views of the experts and the discussion from today’s event.

I would like to express our deepest appreciation to the National Statistics Office and all those who contributed, and there have been many persons, who are acknowledged in the report, to developing the study and finalizing this publication.

With this I would like to close by saying that UNDP remains committed to supporting the Government and people of Mongolia in eradicating poverty and reducing inequality in Mongolia as prioritized in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Thank you!