Agricultural products, bought by BBMG Corporation, are loaded at Ulaanqab city. [Photo provided to Xinhua]

The city of Ulaanqab in North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region has benefited in a big way from joint efforts being made by Beijing and Inner Mongolia on poverty alleviation, according to local officials.

They said that Ulaanqab is regarded as the main battlefield of Inner Mongolia's poverty alleviation work, and the population in deep poverty there once accounted for 46.2 percent of those destitute in the entire autonomous region. 

However, with the help of concerted efforts by authorities in the national capital city and by Inner Mongolia’s authorities, Ulaanqab achieved the goal of lifting all eight of its poverty-stricken counties out of poverty in early 2020.

Officials said, however, that due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, stagnating sales of agricultural products in Ulaanqab had left some farmers at risk of returning to destitution.

To reverse the situation, officials from Ulaanqab and Beijing recently conducted surveys of poverty-stricken counties, selecting more than 400 agricultural and livestock products for sales promotions. 

In addition, efforts are being made to get companies in Beijing to buy slow-moving agricultural products from Ulaanqab.

Officials said that since May, 2020, the Beijing Tourism Group and BBMG Corporation had bought nearly 8,000 poverty alleviation packages for 1.8 million yuan ($254,700), helping 22,375 residents from 7,309 impoverished households in Ulaanqab.