France to provide emergency rescue helicopters and vehicles to Mongolia

AKIPRESS.COM - The National Emergency Management Agency of Mongolia (NEMA) has been working to implement a project aimed at supporting the field of emergency management in cooperation with the Directorate of Civil Defense and Security of France, Montsame repots.
A financial agreement of the project was signed on October 16 at the State House in Ulaanbaatar, by Mongolia's Finance Minister Ch.Khurelbaatar and Ambassador of France to Mongolia Philippe Merlin.
Within the sphere of the project, a new unit for air rescue operations will be established at the Mongolia's NEMA and 12 helicopter pilots and 12 mechanics and emergency rescue doctors will go under training. On top of that, three Airbus EC-145 T-1 helicopters fully equipped for air rescue and search missions and emergency health services, helicopter for flight training, flight simulator, helicopter hangar, fueling station will be supplied from France.
The helicopters will be used for fighting wildfires, deploying emergency personnel, search and rescue missions, transportation of injured people to emergency departments and the alike. Moreover, 42 special-purpose vehicles designed for cold weather firefighting and firefighting in storage of petroleum products will be delivered.
It has been agreed with the French side that the project will be carried out by a 30-year soft loan of EUR 57.9 million financing from France with 10-year moratorium period and an annual interest rate of 0.08 percent.
At the signing ceremony, Minister of Finance Ch.Khurelbaatar expressed his gratitude toward the French side for offering the soft loan to tackle the issues in the emergency management of Mongolia during the current period of financial difficulties where the government's debts equaled to 55 percent of the country's GDP. In turn, the French Ambassador noted that the project is deemed to improve technical facilities of the NEMA while allowing closer cooperation between the two organizations of Mongolia and France.
Speaking of technical facilities, the NEMA is considered as poorly equipped in terms of fire and emergency response equipment and there are around 240 vehicles in 65 emergency management units across the country. Thanks to the financial loan agreement, the availability of emergency service equipment of the NEMA will grow to 80-90 percent.