Head of the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social policy, Education, Culture and Science Yo.Baatarbileg and members of the standing committee met with United Nations Resident Coordinator Beate Trankmann on December 14 to discuss ongoing and upcoming cooperation projects between the UN and Mongolia. During the meeting, the sides discussed a recommendation from a task force made up of the UN experts who worked in Mongolia to oversee the implementation of the International Monetary Fund’s extended fund facility program being carried out in Mongolia, and agreed that the government should focus on challenging issues such as poverty, maternal mortality rate and environmental degradation outlined in the recommendation. They agreed that Parliament has increased budget for social development affairs in recent years, but these efforts have been unsuccessful, and underlined that effort for meeting the surge in demand caused by the country’s growing population and state funding for social policy per capita is insufficient. The sides also agreed that Parliament will collaborate with the UN and Asian Development Bank to allocate optimal budget spending in social policy development, especially for optimizing investment in health, education, culture, and art sectors. They also discussed increasing collaboration between Mongolian and the UN to improve efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN by learning more about the experiences and achievements of countries that have successfully reached the goals, and by carrying out a joint survey on monitoring the progress for the goals in Mongolia.