ULAN BATOR, April 7 (Xinhua) — The 2022 Mongolia Economic Forum kicked off here on Thursday, with the aim of putting Mongolia’s economy on a path of renewal and recovery through public-private partnerships.

Hundreds of representatives from government, private sector, civil society and academia are participating in the two-day forum to discuss the pressing issues in the country’s each sector.

“A very difficult crisis between Russia and Ukraine that began on Feb. 24 has become one of the most pressing geopolitical challenges for the world. This is a blow to the economies of countries that have just been recovering from the two-year pandemic and to the positive outlook of the world’s banking and financial institutions on economic growth,” Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene told the opening ceremony of the forum.

“Now, we are also facing the challenge of how to grow the Mongolian economy in these difficult times. But we are optimistic,” Oyun-Erdene said, noting that Mongolia has already started working on the restoration of the economy.

The economic forum is organized within the framework of the country’s New Revival Policy.

Last December, Mongolia introduced the New Revival Policy to revive the country’s economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes comprehensive reforms in such fields as port, energy, industry, green development and government productivity.

International banking and financial institutions have recently lowered Mongolia’s gross domestic product growth (GDP) forecast for 2022 due to the continued border restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the situation in Ukraine.

Particularly, the World Bank lowered Mongolia’s growth forecast for 2022 to 2.5 percent from a 5.2-percent forecast in October 2021, while the Asian Development Bank has adjusted down its forecast of the country’s growth to 2.3 percent from the previous estimate of 5.7 percent last year.

Under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent border closures, Mongolia’s economy contracted by 4.6 percent in 2020 and expanded by an anemic 1.4 percent in 2021.

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