Export exceeds import by over 1.2 billion USD

The General Customs Office presented the foreign trade report for September on Wednesday, highlighting that the foreign trade balance came out positive despite the pandemic.

In the first nine months of 2020, Mongolia’s total foreign trade turnover amounted to 9.1 billion USD, showing a decline of 1.47 billion USD or 13.9 percent compared to the same period of last year. While export reached 5.15 billion USD in the reference period, import amounted to 3.93 billion USD, resulting in a surplus of 1.2 billion USD.

The office emphasized that though foreign trade is steadily surging amid the pandemic, export has dropped by 13.4 percent year-on-year and import by 14.6 percent year-on-year.

In total export, minerals amounted 3.6 billion USD (accounting for 70.3 percent of exports); export of natural or cultured pearls, precious or semiprecious stones amounted to 1.2 billion USD (22.7 percent); export of raw hides and skins, leather, furs and other animal articles amounted to 6.5 million USD (0.1 percent); and textiles equaled 218.5 million USD (4.2 percent).

Mongolia shipped all exports of crude oil, iron ores and concentrates and zinc ores, and copper concentrate to China along with 96 percent of coal exports. The majority (76.1 percent) of fluorspar concentrates went to China and nearly a quarter (23.6 percent) went to Russia. Mongolia sent all of its

exported washed cashmere and most of processed and unprocessed hides of cows and horses to China, but exported nearly 80 percent of combed cashmere to Italy. Gold was sold to the UK (4.6 percent), Singapore (5.4 percent), and Switzerland (90 percent).

A breakdown of import show that machinery, mechanic equipment, electric appliances and their parts amounted to 797.6 million USD (accounting for 20.3 percent of total import), while minerals valued at 728 million USD (18.5 percent) -- with oil products costing 583.3 million USD. Mongolia imported products of animal or vegetable origin and food products worth 484.1 million

USD, vehicles and aircraft worth 658.6 million USD, base metals and similar products worth 422 million USD, and chemical products amounting to 267.4 million USD.

Goods with value of 11.5 million USD were imported as foreign aid from international financial and economic organizations and donor countries. By origin, 17 percent of these goods came from the USA, 18.3 percent from Austria, 14.1 percent from Germany, 12.7 percent from China, and 11.6 percent from Switzerland. Donated goods mostly came from Austria (39 percent), the USA (24.1 percent) and Japan (8.6 percent).