📋 Tender Overview
Scope :
The coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic has severely impacted micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (msmes) and employment, and has amplified development challenges in mongolia. the country lacks systems for developing highly skilled workers capable of driving digital transformation, research and development (r&d), and innovation to address its development challenges. the project will strengthen collaboration between six key state-owned universities, public research institutes (pris), and industry to enhance interdisciplinary graduate education and research, and technology transfer and commercialization as the foundations for developing research universities in mongolia which can cultivate highly skilled workers. it will also support the development of policies, institutions, and systems for enhancing the quality, relevance, and impact of graduate education and research through international and regional partnerships. the adoption of digital and clean technologies and the development of digital tools and skills constitute an integral part of the project.
Mongolias economy was hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic, recording negative growth of gross domestic product (gdp) (-5.3%) and jobs (-5.4%) in 2020. apart from agriculture whose value added grew by 6.2%, all other sectors experienced contraction, including mining (-9.4%), other industry (-1.6%), and services (-7.1%). msmes, which account for about 77.0% of total registered business entities and 72.0% of employment, particularly suffered from revenue falls, liquidity and cash flow problems, and reduction in product and service offerings and employees, even if business closures were avoided. the labor force participation rate declined from 60.5% (53.4% for women, 68.3% for men) in 2019 to 58.7% (51.7% for women, 66.7% for men) in 2020. many faced temporary employment disruptions, if not long-term job losses, in 2019-2020.
the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on employment varied across sectors. while some sectors (health, finance, information technology, education, trade, and transportation) saw rise in employment in 2019-2020, most sectors experienced mild to sharp decrease, with worse impacts on low-skilled and informal sectors. negative effects of the pandemic were also felt by enterprises, especially msmes, in sectors that were slow to adopt digital technologies, less r&d-intensive, and more reliant on global supply chains, such as construction, entertainment, manufacturing, and tourism. overall, the capacity and readiness to pursue digital transformation, as well as r&d performance, and technology and knowledge outputs, need to be improved across sectors, despite significant investments in telecommunications and high smartphone ownership and penetration.
the covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of r&d and innovation globally---for the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and digital tools to mitigate pandemic impacts, and for policy making in rapidly changing env
