Development Policy Centre Discussion Paper No. 42
September 2015
Recently, the direct distribution of natural resource wealth through cash transfers (“resources-to-cash”) has been recommended to help avoid the resource curse. Mongolia is perhaps the only developing country that has actually introduced a resources-to-cash scheme. While the scheme has showed mixed results, overall it has been a failure, losing political and public support because of design and implementation flaws. One should not dismiss the potential benefits of resources-to-cash on the basis of one, poorly designed and implemented instance. Rather the lesson of the Mongolia experience is that resources-to-cash needs to take its place alongside, rather than be favoured over, other policy instruments that have been put forward to avoid the resource curse.
Yeung, Y. & Howes, S. 2015, ‘Resources-to-cash: a cautionary tale from Mongolia’, Discussion Paper No. 42, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra.