ULAN BATOR, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Mongolian government announced Thursday that it has reached an agreement with commercial banks on postponing the repayment of nomadic herders' loans until June.

Almost all provinces of Mongolia have experienced an extreme wintry weather, known as "dzud," while over 80 percent of the country has been blanketed by snow, according to the country's weather monitoring agency.

"Dzud" is a Mongolian term to describe a severely cold winter when a large number of livestock die because the ground is frozen or covered by snow.

Taking into account the current situation, the Mongolian government has reached an agreement with commercial banks to postpone the loan repayment of herders until June 1, said Sainbuyan Amarsaikhan, the country's deputy prime minister and head of the State Emergency Commission.

"There are 190,000 herder households in the country. Over 141,000 of them have loans from commercial banks," Amarsaikhan said.

Due to the dzud, over 1.5 million head of livestock have so far died this winter in the country, one of the last nomadic countries in the world.

The livestock sector is a central pillar of the Mongolian economy. The country's total livestock population stood at 64.7 million at the end of 2023. Enditem

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