Gross Domestic Product

The Mongolian economy has been growing steadily since 2004, apart from the slowdown in 2009, as a result of the global financial crisis. In 2011, Mongolia had the fastest growing gross domestic product (GDP) in the world at 17.3%. GDP growth since then has been declining and stands at 1.0% in 2016. Performance is attributed to poorer foreign investment confidence and uncompetitive exports, particularly from mining.

Historically, economic growth in Mongolia has been driven predominantly by the mining sector, which contributed approximately 20.0% of GDP in 2016, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO). Agriculture is the second largest industry contributing to 12.2% of GDP in 2016.

GDP reached MNT 12.8 trillion at current prices in the first half of 2017, up 16.8 percent compared to same period of the previous year.

Foreign trade

In the first half year of 2017, Mongolia traded with 139 countries from all over the world and total trade turnover reached USD 5.0 billion, of which USD 3.1 billion were made up by exports and USD 1.9 billion by imports.

According to Mongolian Customs, Mongolia had a foreign trade with 151 countries and as a result total turnover of foreign trade amounted 8275.3 mln.USD. Export exceeded import by 1559.4 mln.USD and foreign trade balance became positive.

Mineral products contributed 84 percent of total export in 2016, including copper concentrate, coal, gold, crude oil, iron ores, molybdenum concentrate, fluorspar, zinc concentrates. Mongolia has exported goods to 74 foreign countries including China (79.0%), United Kingdom (11.3%), Switzerland (4.7%).

In total import machinery, mechanic equipment and parts thereof, electric appliances, parts thereof shared with percentage of 20.3%, oil products are 15.8%, vehicles and aircraft, parts thereof-13.0%, products of animal or vegetable origin and foodstuff-15.1%, and others.

Mongolia has imported goods originating from 152 different countries including the Russian Federation (26.2%), China (31.0%), the USA (4.1%), Japan (9.8%), Republic of Korea (5.9%) and Federal Republic of Germany (3.6%).