Chimediin Saikhanbileg

Chimediin Saikhanbileg (Mongolian: Чимэдийн Сайханбилэг; born 17 February 1969) is a Mongolian politician who served as the 28th Prime Minister of Mongolia from 2014 to 2016, and whose work and career are associated with the political, economic, and mining sectors of Mongolia. A member of the Democratic Party, he has been residing in the United States since 2019.

Saikhanbileg was born on 17 February 1969, as the second of 4 children of Chimed, on the morning of the first day of Tsagaan Sar, in Bayantümen district of Dornod Province,^[1] the easternmost province of Mongolia.^[2] His father, Chimed, and mother, Orolmaa Alag, were both engineers. His father oversaw the construction of new industrial, cultural, and residential buildings, and the new airport built by the Russian Construction Company in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, greatly contributed to the development of the city's modern image and appearance. His mother, Orolmaa, personally carried out the technical work of developing film for all Mongolian feature films from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s.

Saikhanbileg attended the 45th school in Ulaanbaatar city between 1976 and 1986 for general compulsory education. During his school years, he was a socially active student, serving as a board member of the children's organization of all schools in the capital. In 1983, he organized and supervised the largest Mongolian children's assembly, the 5th Annual Inheritor Conference. He also worked at Mongolian National Television as a host of children's shows.

After graduating from secondary school, Saikhanbileg went to Moscow to study history at Moscow University for the Humanities from 1986 to 1991 and received a bachelor's degree in History and History Education.^[3][4]

When working for the Mongolian Youth Federation, Mongolia's largest youth NGO, Saikhanbileg studied law and received his Bachelor of Law degree from the School of Law of the Mongolian National University in 1995. After his first election and service as a Member of Parliament, Saikhanbileg spent a year in Boulder, Colorado, at the University of Colorado Economics Institute from 2000 to 2001 and subsequently completed his master's degree at the George Washington University Law School in Washington DC, USA.

As a young student in Moscow, Saikhanbileg witnessed Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost; shortly afterwards, the fall of the Berlin Wall. As soon as he graduated from the university in 1991, he started to actively participate in the Mongolian Democratic Revolution. At that time, the ruling party – the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party was influencing Mongolian youth through its largest youth organization, the Mongolian Revolutionary Youth League. Saikhanbileg initiated and implemented numerous reforms and ideas in line with the ideals and mindsets of youths, including the reorganization of this organization into the Mongolian Youth Federation (MYF), modernizing its form into that of the classical non-governmental organizations, and expelling party influence. Between 1992 and 1997, Saikhanbileg served as the secretary general of the MYF.^[5]

As a member of the Democratic Union Coalition, Saikhanbileg ran and won in the 1996 parliamentary election from the 68th Songino Khairkhan district of Ulaanbaatar,^[6] becoming the youngest member of the State Great Khural at the age of 27. After his election, Saikhanbileg became President of the MYF in 1997 and served until 2002.^[5] He was one of the initiating MPs of the 2000 Constitutional Amendment. He also initiated the Law on Parliament, the Law on the Legal Status of Parliament Members, and the Law on Parliamentary Procedures, which became the basis of the contemporary core legal and regulatory system.

In 1998, he was appointed Minister of Enlightenment (equivalent to an education minister) by parliament at the age of 29,^[5] also making him the youngest ministerial appointment in modern Mongolian history. During his one-year tenure, Saikhanbileg reformed the higher (tertiary) education system, passed new tertiary education laws, and began an accreditation system for all universities in Mongolia. The legal basis of private schools in the education system was legalized for the first time. In addition, universities came to be governed by an independent board, and the appointment of university presidents was freed from political influence. Saikhanbileg also served as the first Chairman of the Board of the National University of Mongolia.

As Minister of Enlightenment, from the late 1990s, Saikhanbileg began the third wave of education, training Mongolian youth in the USA, Australia, the European Union, Japan, and Korea. This effort was complemented by the government's support to students through stipends, tuition loans, and aid. Additionally, he had the Law on Science and Technology approved, securing 1.5% of the annual government budget for science and technology.

Saikhanbileg studied in the United States for 2 years after being unseated in the 2000 parliamentary election. While studying at George Washington University, he conceived 2 ideas to implement in Mongolia and successfully implemented them after graduating. The first was estate planning. He established E&T Law Firm and worked there from 2002 to 2004. The second idea was to establish a secondary school in Mongolia aligned with American standards. Finding a partner and raising over US$10 million, he founded the American School of Ulaanbaatar, a private international K-12 school in Mongolia.

Saikhanbileg was appointed Chairman of the Information and Communication Technology Authority of the Mongolian Government after the 2004 Parliamentary Election, serving until 2008. Under his leadership, 2004 to 2008 was a period of rapid development in telecommunications and information technologies in Mongolia.

He oversaw and completed the construction of high-speed Internet access and fiber-optic cables in a 1.5 million km2 area of Mongolia, connecting 21 aimags and 330 soums during those years. This fiber-optic network became the first infrastructure in Mongolia to connect the entire country. Within only 4 years, a new network spanning almost 10,000 km had been built. He successfully renegotiated a 20-year contract with Korea Telecom, signed in 1995, that granted the company an exclusive right to use the central telecommunications network. Saikhanbileg was able to remove the exclusive rights, inviting fair competition to the industry. With the advent of two new cellular carriers, competition flourished, leading to a reduction in users' bills by almost 3 to 4 times. Cell phone user numbers increased to 4.3 million, representing 3 million Mongolians, making Mongolia a country with a leading mobile penetration rate. The percentage of smartphone users has grown to over 80%. At his initiative, the projects "E-Mongolia", "E-Government", "Internet for Every Family", and "A Computer for Every Child" were successfully implemented, and the total size of Internet traffic was increased by a factor of 400. The IPTV project to connect Mongolia to the main fiber-optic network linking Asia and Europe was successfully implemented, allowing users to rewind any program aired within 72 hours. E-government projects eliminated bureaucracy and red tape in government services and enabled numerous innovative services to reach the public.

In the 2012 parliamentary election, Saikhanbileg became an MP for the third time; his party won the largest number of seats in the State Great Khural and formed a coalition government headed by party chairman Norovyn Altankhuyag. Saikhanbileg was appointed Chief of the Cabinet Secretariat and Minister without portfolio.^[5] As Chief of the Cabinet Secretariat, Saikhanbileg undertook a series of important reforms to alleviate the burden of red tape on business, promote greater openness across the core of World Bank Doing Business indicators, and, within only 2 years, Mongolia advanced from the 97th to the 56th in the world ranking. Moreover, by certain indicators, Mongolia ranked among the top 20 countries.

He established a permanent 11-11 Call Center for citizens to submit complaints and feedback, introduced government service electronic machines capable of providing 34 public services, implemented reforms in the professional inspectorate, and reformed government-issued permits for businesses and citizens, lowering the number from 900 to 300.

Saikhanbileg was appointed the 28th Prime Minister of Mongolia on 21 November 2014, following the resignation of Norovyn Altankhuyag on 9 November.^[7] In his address to the parliament on the day of his appointment as the country's Premier, Saikhanbileg noted: "My Government's priority will be the Economy, with the second priority being the Economy and the third – Economy."^[8]

He is credited with reducing budget expenditures by MNT 2 trillion consecutively over 2 years. Collaborating with the Bank of Mongolia, he implemented "Good" programs to protect low-income segments of the population and support the middle class. Also, as a result of implementing the VAT registration system reform, cash transactions were drastically reduced, and the number of cash and cashless transaction machines increased by a factor of 4 in the first year alone. Compared with the economic performance of 2008–2009, when the country was under the same grave economic conditions and had shrunk by 1.3%, the economy under Saikhanbileg's management grew modestly by 1.3%, under the same tough economic circumstances.

Saikhanbileg, as Prime Minister, worked to attract foreign investment to Mongolia. He visited the main capital markets: London, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore; met with the leaders, businesses, and investors from those countries; organized Investment conferences in each country he visited; presented Mongolian markets and mega projects; and invited them to invest. He also visited prominent television studios such as CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, BBC, and CCTV for live programs to speak about the political environment surrounding the Mongolian economy and investment. He met with the World Bank, IMF, IFC, Credit Suisse, EBRD, ADB, and ING, and their executives, and came up with specific solutions for investment and co-operation in Mongolia.

As a result, the two-year negotiation of the Oyu Tolgoi Underground Mine was concluded, and the decision to launch a $4.2 billion construction project was reached on 19 May 2015. Inaugurating the Oyu Tolgoi Project, Saikhanbileg said, "From now on, the OT project transforms from a controversial political matter into a business project. From now on, the matter will be settled by the members of the board and not by politicians."

In July 2016, as the Prime Minister of Mongolia, Saikhanbileg, hosted the leaders of state and government of 53 countries of Europe and Asia for the ASEM Summit^[9] in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar.

Saikhanbileg is married and is a father of three. He met his wife, Baigal, at the Mongolian Student Festival on the shores of Lake Baikal. Saikhanbileg and Baigal married in 1993. Saikhanbileg is fluent in Mongolian, Russian, and English.^[4]

Saikhanbileg engages in powerlifting as a hobby. He was elected the President of the Mongolian Powerlifting Federation from 2010 to 2017.