Mongolia - International trade

Mongolian international trade has fluctuated considerably during last 3 decades. After the collapse of both the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and trade with the former Soviet Union, Mongolian international trade experienced a dramatic decline that continued until the mid-1990s. Since then, Mongolian trade has started a slow recovery, boosted by growing exports of gold and other mineral resources. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1997.

During the 1990s Mongolia managed to diversify its markets, and China became one of its fastest-growing trade partners. In 1998 exports to China amounted to 30.1 percent of total Mongolian exports, followed by Switzerland (21.5 percent), Russia (12.1 percent), South Korea

Trade (expressed in billions of US$): Mongolia
	Exports	Imports
1975	N/A	N/A
1980	.403	.548
1985	.689	1.096
1990	.661	.924
1995	.473	.415
1998	N/A	N/A
SOURCE: International Monetary Fund. International Financial Statistics Yearbook 1999.

Exchange rates: Mongolia
tughriks per US$1
Dec 2000	1,097.00
2000	1,076.67
1999	1,072.37
1998	840.83
1997	789.99
1996	548.40
SOURCE: CIA World Factbook 2001 [ONLINE].

(9.7 percent) and the United States (8.1 percent). In that year, Russia remained the primary source of imports (30.6 percent), followed by China (13.3 percent), Japan (11.7 percent), South Korea (7.5 percent), and the United States (6.9 percent.) In 1998 Mongolia exported a total of $316.8 million in goods and imported $472.4 million in goods.