The little princess was born just before the Mongolian lunar New Year. A girl’s mother, who is a woman joined in marriage to me (wanna make a bit joke), is doing very well and did a wonderful and hard job indeed. It seems that the little girl is getting used to the outside world very quickly. We thank everyone for their prayers and kind support.
Down Syndrome Association Mongolia (DSAM) was established by 4 families in January 2007 as a Non Government Organization status. The association started its very active operation since March 2008 and just organized its quarterly meeting last Sunday. Today, we have got over 30 families as members and working with several international professional organizations such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, France, and Israel. Moreover, we have cooperating with over 40 local and foreign individuals and legal entities, such as British Embassy, Save the Children, Special school #25, Maternal and Child health research center, National medical research institute of Mongolia, Special pre-school center #10 as one team on behalf of our children to explore and develop this unique community in Mongolia. Association members have already become one tight family more than their relatives indeed. Mrs.Oyun, Parliament Member, works as a chairman of DSAM and Mrs.Erdenechuluun works as an Executive Director of DSAM. There would not be much outcomes without these two wonderful ladies.
We had a plan to have DSAM website and I was assigned on this task. In cooperation with Mr.Enhjargal, we have created a raw draft of the website. I could not wait to let you know the address of this website; however, some function and contents are not ready. It will be improved and updated regularly. Please visit this website and let others know that what is Down syndrome, what is our responsibility, how we shall convey right messages to public, more importantly, let families, who has down syndrome member, join this Association to develop their children and socialize with current community.
If you would like to support us financially, please use the following bank accounts. Your generosity will be always greatly appreciated by us no matter the amount.
Bank Name: XacBank
Branch #: 01
Account name: Down Syndrome
Association Mongolia
Account #: 25000088 MNT
Account #: 27000086 USD
SWIFT Code: CAXBMNUB
Хромсомын Өөрчлөлттэй Хүүхдүүдэд Туслах Сан ТББ-ын
I greatly appreciate Aruinaa from MOSDAQ LLC who helped me to translate this article. Different points of views are very welcome on this topic.
Lately this kind of term has come into fashion for everyone who pretends to understand the real meaning of it! In reality, there are a few professionals who do have the appropriate knowledge of it in Mongolia. What stands for capital market? Why its development is so important for Mongolia, why the present stock exchange is so unreliable and unable to function efficiently? – I decided to give some answers of mine to these questions and provide you with some basic understanding of the capital market after having discussion with some professionals of this sphere.
In an ordinary family, father and mother are the people who earn money in order to maintain and support all the family members. So if to put it simpler, in a financial market as a whole, capital market or stock exchanges can be seen as a “father” and the money market or in other words the commercial banks can be seen as a “mother”. If to look at the current Mongolian capital market situation, we can see a poor “widowed mother” with lots of kids on her lap. In other words, the commercial banking system has gained a considerable stability in the Mongolian economy and playing an important role in it. It’s clearly seen that almost all of the business companies as well as individuals have become directly dependent from banks which can be proved by the recent world financial crisis. Everywhere we can trace the tracks of price manipulation: the old grandma standing in her cottage and saying “Petrol price has rocketed, my dear, so I gotta raise the price on milk, you know” and the guy raising the price of his old apartment due to the increase of the cement price and etc. In developed countries, there is a common efficient practice to solve this kind of price problems with the help of exchanges, for example, commodity and futures securities. Nowadays only 5 percent of the capital that business companies manage to raise from the financial market is obtained from the capital market and the remaining 95 percent of it is from commercial banks. Total dependency from one thing is extremely harmful, which can be proved by the recent crisis in the banking sector: money supply shortage, loan restriction, loan and currency rate increase, high inflation rate, etc. It’s clearly seen that in our current financial market situation there’s a desperate need in a strong-willed and reliable “father”.
If to throw a quick glance at the current stock exchange situation in Mongolia, it can be determined as a “stepfather” by most of its attributes: by its reputation among clients, operational procedures, security level, etc. To be honest with, I don’t mean to humiliate somebody and I do apologize if some friends or relatives of Mr. Sodkhuu are reading the article, but one thing to remark on: recently during one of his interviews at the Eagle television, Mr. Sodkhuu was referring to a so-called American “Jow Dones” exchange!! Unless otherwise I’m mistaken it is called Dow Jones index. It’s not a secret that Mongolia lacks capital market professionals. Unfortunately, there are a lot “unprofessional” ones who are nobbling and swindling around by gossiping and cheating. But notwithstanding this, capital market in Mongolia is developing by its own way.
According to the Mongol Bank’s Statistic bulletin (December 2008), from 376 listed companies at the MSE only 50 of them were engaged in everyday trading at the exchange and the average monthly turnover was 740 million tugriks (average daily turnover - 37 million tugriks). If to compare it with the 2008 pick period in May, when the total turnover reached 25.7 billion tugriks, we can see a definite “crisis”. Of course, there’s a big contribution of Anod Bank’s 20 billion tugriks to it. The fact that the number of total listed securities at the MSE is reaching 2.9 billion and its market capitalization at the end of 2008 was 515 billion (USD 407 million) tugriks gives us a feeling of positive trend but if to compare those numbers with its market potential then we can see that it’s not so satisfactory enough. Market capitalization at the end of 2007 reached 726 billion tugriks which was a record hitting result. It’s worth mentioning that while in December 1998 the price per share of Mongolian top 20 business companies (Top 20 index is calculated by multiplying the number of traded securities by their market price) was about 200 tugriks, in December 2008 the price per share raised to 5700 tugriks. As a matter of fact the Top 20 index should have been calculated by taking into consideration the method of the basket of common consumer goods, which in turn determines the inflation rate, but presently the method we’re using to calculate this index doesn’t consider different types of business activities. So there comes a question about the objectivity and reliability of the index and about how it’s risky for investors to make decisions basing on it.
As far as I’m concerned the current stock exchange’s operational methods and procedures are too much complicated and the information and security classification doesn’t meet the international standards as expected. As a result there are too many problems which need a proper and efficient solution indeed. For example, the fact that for over 18 years there have been only two kind of securities – shares and bonds – traded and no more alternatives offered; for investors there’s no possibility to get information concerning their obtained securities at any time they wish to, there’s no way to control such kind of information; to get the money the sell side of a transaction have to overcome different stages of bureaucracy; in order to get involved in trading investors have to spend certain amount of time at the broker physically, dealer’s offices making their orders and transferring their money; most of the IPOs at the MSE are unsuccessful and due to it securities are converting into “dead” or illiquid capital; there’s a restricted involvement of commercial banks in the capital market; information centralization and risk; the fact that broker dealers are using simple disks or flash cards in order to share information, which is done with a high level of information leak risk; the possibility for some “unfair” participants to swindle, rook others by using insider information, etc. Notwithstanding, the fact that there are 16 commercial banks functioning in Mongolia, only two of them – Zoos and Golomt – are engaged in the payment process after trading, which is an “interesting” fact itself. Why can’t we give all commercial banks an opportunity of real and fair competition in the capital market where about half a billion dollar is in circulation??? Perhaps nowadays these kinds of issues are highly politicized. Besides, the MSE is still a government owned institution, so these are some kind of “shall not avoidable” problems for them.
Nowadays two essential things are extremely needed: From one side, company’s interest and desire in raising money through stock exchanges, their operational and information transparency, accurate business plans, trust and belief in success are desperately needed like a pure water. From the other side, investors’ knowledge of the market, their fair trading and active attitudes are necessary like a pure air. Once turning out their pockets, investors are interested in two main things: how to make profit from price difference, how to get dividends. In order to achieve their goals, investors shall cooperate closely with the company’s managing and supervising teams, actively participating in shareholder’s meetings. It is needless to mention that most of the commercial banks consider exchange as their competitor and try to formulate tactics against it. So there’s no way to blame the banks with such understanding for being stingy with their 2.6 trillion tugriks of loan portfolio, 601 billion tugriks of current account money, 427 billion tugriks of demand deposits, 907 billion tugriks of term deposit, in total 1.9 trillion tugriks deposit!! (Commercial banks joint report – 31.12.2008). But even if companies and business entities decide to prefer stock exchanges to banks in order to raise money, this money will definitely pass through commercial banks (in current situation through Golomt or Zoos). Companies won’t keep money under mattress!! And even if people will prefer buying stocks and bonds instead of making deposits in banks, their money, with no choice, will pass through current accounts of business entities in different banks. In this case, banks will certainly benefit by obtaining more opportunities to get deposit sources with considerable lower cost and increase the amount of non cash settlement circulation of the banking system as a whole.
All these new opportunities are just the top of the iceberg and as time goes by and in case the capital market development in Mongolia succeeds, soon we can meet the international standards of such top world exchanges like NASDAQ, Euronext, Tokyo, New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. (It’s good to be an optimist!!)
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