43,000 passenger cars imported in the first half of 2026 www.gogo.mn

In the first half of this year, Mongolia traded with 150 countries, with total foreign trade turnover reaching USD 16.5 billion. Exports amounted to USD 10.4 billion, while imports totaled USD 6.1 billion, resulting in a surplus of USD 4.3 billion.

In 2015-2025, Mongolia imported 720,000 passenger cars, 210,000 trucks, and more than 15,000 public transport vehicles.

In the first half of 2026 alone, 43,000 passenger cars, 10,000 trucks, and 615 public transport vehicles were imported.

Passenger cars accounted for 76.3% of Mongolia’s imports from Japan, while trucks accounted for 5.7% of imports from China.

Total imports increased by 10.6%, or USD 588.1 million, compared with the same period last year.

Oil Refinery Construction to be Intensified and Legislative Bottlenecks Removed www.montsame.mn

At its regular Cabinet meeting, ministers discussed fuel supplies from the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea, as well as pressing challenges facing the construction of the Oil Refinery in Altanshiree soum, Dornogobi aimag, on August 12, 2026. Directives were subsequently issued to ministers to eliminate legal and regulatory bottlenecks.

Specifically, the Cabinet resolved 14 key issues, agreeing to monitor implementation weekly. Key measures include:

Resolving relations regarding the refinery's tax and debt obligations and increasing its credit line and amount;
Developing the project as an industrial and technological park to ensure smooth and accelerated operations;
Placing the construction site and refinery premises under the protection of the Internal Troops;
Tasking the Minister of Economy and Development and the Minister of Education with formulating plans and estimates to train and specialize refinery personnel;
Providing the public with accurate information;
Expediting official responses to permit requests and documentation submitted by the refinery.
Additionally, the Cabinet heard a report on the progress of constructing fuel storage facilities to establish a 23-day reserve. To support this effort, the Bank of Mongolia has issued over MNT 360 billion in loans for 26 projects across 21 enterprises.

According to the Media and Public Relations Department of the Parliament of Mongolia, the Prime Minister directed relevant officials to refrain from bureaucratic inaction or delaying required paperwork, ensure timely decisions on project financing, facilitate the prompt handover of completed projects to the State Commission, and strictly enforce applicable standards.

Ten Years of 'Hunnu Rock': The Hu Launches New World Tour www.montsame.mn

Global folk-metal sensation The Hu celebrated a decade of international success with a massive homecoming concert in Ulaanbaatar, launching their 2026 world tour before thousands of fans at Central Stadium.

The August 8 "Wolf Totem World Premiere" concert marked both the band’s 10th anniversary and the official opening chapter of their next era. Performing on a custom stage built with intricate lighting production, the group used the landmark show to preview what lies ahead for their global audience.

Founded in Ulaanbaatar in 2016, The Hu pioneered a distinct style dubbed "Hunnu rock." The music blends heavy modern rock riffs with traditional Mongol instruments like the morin khuur (horse-head fiddle) and tumur khuur (jaw harp) alongside the throat-singing techniques such as khuumii and kharkhiraa.

Singing exclusively in Mongolian, the band rapidly built a global fan base. They became the first Mongolian band to top U.S. Billboard charts and score a hit on the UK Top 100 Singles chart. To date, their tracks have amassed nearly 900 million streams worldwide across digital platforms.

The group’s footprint extends deep into mainstream global culture. They contributed original music to the hit video games Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The latter earning a Grammy nomination for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. They also covered Metallica's "Through the Never" for The Metallica Blacklist project, toured as special guests for Iron Maiden, and played major festival stages including Coachella and Glastonbury.

In recognition of their global reach, the government designated the band as official Cultural Envoys and awarded them the state supreme decoration of Mongolia, the Order of Chinggis Khaan, in 2019. During the award ceremony, state officials commended their debut album, The Gereg, for bringing Mongol heritage to international audiences in the spirit of the diplomatic passports issued under Chinggis Khaan.

Upcoming UK Tour Dates

As part of their 2026 world tour, "The Hu" plans to hold a series of concerts in the UK titled "Warrior Chant." The tour will begin on September 29 at the O2 Academy in Glasgow and conclude on October 11 at UEA in Norwich.

The tour schedule includes the following cities:

-September 29: Glasgow, O2 Academy

-October 1: Bristol, Prospect Building

-October 2: Bournemouth, O2 Academy

-October 3: Newcastle, O2 City Hall

-October 5: Belfast, The Telegraph

-October 8: Birmingham, O2 Academy

-October 9: London, O2 Academy Brixton

-October 10: Manchester, O2 Apollo

-October 11: Norwich, UEA

The French band SKÁLD will join "The Hu" on this tour. This marks the Hu's first UK tour since performing at the Glastonbury Festival in the summer of 2023, a recording of which they released as a live album in 2024.

The great poet Yavuukhulan Begz once wrote, "My steed, my poetry - you and I need the world's stage." This was a heartfelt anthem by the great poet who sang of traditional nomadic life, recognizing his own standing and where he ought to reach. Now, having triumphantly reached that world stage and concluded a decade with the roaring chants of "Hu, Hu, Hu" from their fans, the countdown to a new decade for the Hu has officially begun. How will they amaze us and the world?

National AI Council Established to Drive Digital Economy www.montsame.mn

The Cabinet has resolved to establish the "National AI Council" by amending Cabinet Resolution No. 21 "On Re-approving the Composition of Government National Committees, Commissions, and National Councils."

Mongolia has outlined more than 30 initiatives related to big data and artificial intelligence in its "Vision-2050" long-term development policy document and the Government Action Program for 2024–2028. However, in the 2024 Government AI Readiness Index published annually by Oxford Insights, Mongolia ranked 98th out of 188 countries, receiving a score of "0" on whether the country possesses strategic planning and policy documents. This highlights the urgent need to formulate a national-level AI strategy.

The establishment of the Council will create opportunities to integrate AI-driven initiatives across all sectors, export AI products and services, and accelerate the growth of the digital economy. Uchral Nyam-Osor, Prime Minister of Mongolia, will head the Council, while the Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Communications and the Minister of Education will serve as Vice Chairs.

Council members will comprise the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Deputy Minister of Economy and Development, and State Secretaries of other ministries, alongside representatives from national AI professional associations participating based on their interest.

Specifically, participating members by agreement include the Board Chairman and members of the "National AI Professional Council" NGO, the Chief Technology Officer of Mogul Group, the Chief Executive Officer of Black Labs, the Director of the Chief Information Officers Club, and the Chief Operating Officer of Voyageur AI.

The Magic of Mongolia: Why people visit the most sparsely populated country in the world www.jacksflightclub.com

The 2020s are definitely shaping up to be the era of Central Asian tourism. Post-pandemic trends have travelers finally appreciating the region’s vast untouched landscapes, nomadic cultures, and (most importantly) lack of crowds. Turns out there’s something about surviving a global virus that makes people really want to get away from each other and disappear into the scenery! 

Result? The “Stans” have exploded in popularity over the last few years. Folks who never once thought about Kazakhstan before 2020 are suddenly clambering to traverse those grasslands on horseback. A few of Jack’s own writers went to Kyrgyzstan last year to see it for themselves, and it did not disappoint.

But head further east, and you find a country that’s even more spacious, even more off the grid, and even less crowded.

A serene view of Mongolia's vast grasslands stretches under a cloudy sky, with distant snow-capped mountains on the horizon.
Remote and rugged, Mongolia isn’t exactly a “beginner-friendly” destination — even by Central Asian standards. This is the most sparsely inhabited country in the entire world, with a population smaller than Berlin’s spread out over a nation double the size of Turkey. Show up ill-prepared, and you might find yourself stranded hundreds of miles from civilization, surrounded by nothing but an endless sea of steppe. 

In spite of those challenges (or perhaps because of them), Mongolian tourism is still climbing. Its growth might be dwarfed by the Stans, but it’s been booming for the first half of 2026. This might be the first year the country cracks one million visitors!

So… what are all those visitors doing in Mongolia? What’s it like to experience a country where 99% of the land is void of people? 

Contrary to what you might think, it usually starts off a little chaotic. In order to reach the tranquility of the open grasslands, you’ll first need to brave Ulaanbaatar. The country's capital and only major urban center is a sprawling, mazelike metropolis that houses half the Mongolian population. It's confusing and hectic and definitely not set up for tourists, but as a dense cultural melting pot of a city, it rewards those who are willing to dig. 

Ulaanbaatar cityscape unfolds with a backdrop of rolling green hills under a sky dotted with cumulus clouds.
You'll spot Buddhist temples next to Soviet housing blocks next to Irish pubs. You can take selfies with statues of both Genghis Khan and Paul McCartney. Museums range from the typical fine art and natural history fare to quiet dirt lots dotted with shamanic offerings.

And then there’s the nightlife scene. The crazy, vibrant nightlife scene. Packing half your population into the coldest capital city on Earth is a surefire way to produce a next-level bar and club culture. Spots like ZÜ are said to get pretty wild, but you can find anything from laid-back dives to upscale cocktail lounges. 

But despite its twists and turns, most people don’t visit Mongolia for the capital. It’s hard to remember when you’re lost in the labyrinth of Ulaanbaatar, but this is the most sparsely populated country in the world, remember?

Time to get our steppes in!

A van traverses the vast grasslands of the Mongolian steppe under a cloudy sky.
Mongolia has almost zero infrastructure outside the city, so this isn’t really a place for wandering aimlessly. Traversing those vast landscapes definitely requires a gameplan.

The simplest option is to hop aboard the Mongolian branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway — the train stops right in Ulaanbaatar. From there you'll head across the eastern half of the country and into Beijing, passing through miles of grassy steppe, the Gobi desert, and the Great Wall of China along the way. 

Three camels traverse the Gobi Desert's sandy expanse under a clear sky.
A once-in-a-lifetime set of views, to be sure, but folks who choose this method won’t get the full effect of Mongolia’s majesty. For that, you’ll need to dig a little deeper.

While it might be tempting to grab your rental car and disappear into the wilderness by yourself, remember that you’ll be dealing with rough terrain and a total lack of services. A dashboard light turning on could quite literally signal your death. Because of these constraints, planning a trip to Mongolia tends to be about booking a tour.

That’s not as easy as it sounds — there are tons of options online, but getting a booking confirmed can be an obstacle. A lot of companies won’t take you unless they have enough guests to justify the journey, so you’ll often have better luck if you collect your own group of intrepid travelers (usually around 5-6 total) before trying to book. It can also be easier (and cheaper) to book in person, so some folks either ask their accommodations to do it for them or spend some time in Ulaanbaatar hunting for a tour.

Golden sand dunes with intricate patterns overlook the serene waters of Khyargas Lake in Mongolia, framed by distant rolling hills.
As with any tour across a country this size, you’ll also have options on which region you want to explore. The most popular are Central Mongolia (closer to the city, full of steppes and ancient ruins, THE classic “Mongolia scenery”) and the Gobi Desert (camels, dunes, the works). Other areas have woodlands, massive sparkling lakes, or rocky mountains. Longer tours will take you through multiple regions, whereas the simpler, shorter tours might just take you out into the steppe for a few days.

Let’s say you’ve gotten your tour confirmed, and you’re heading out tomorrow. For most folks, that means packing into an all-terrain vehicle bright and early in the morning, but some tours offer travel by horse, camel, or motorcycle. 

A cluster of yurts nestled in the Altai Mountains in Mongolia.
Whatever locomotion you’re using, you'll most likely be staying in yurts called ger camps. This is where you’ll start to feel that “miles off the grid” sensation — totally cut off from the rest of the world, it’s just you, your group, and the local hunters and nomads taking care of you. While there’s not exactly a lot of amenities at most of these camps (midnight bathroom runs might involve carrying a lantern to a quiet spot in the field), you’ll have a bed and plenty of hearty Mongolian meals.

Mongolian hunter
When you’re not asleep in your yurt, you’ll be experiencing some of the most remote, unique cultures in the world and witnessing natural landscapes that only a tiny percentage of humanity will ever see. Maybe you’ll watch wild horses gallop across the grasslands. Maybe you’ll see the local hunters compete with trained eagles, or trek the taiga with nomadic reindeer herders, or hike to isolated monasteries in the desert.

When all is said and done, you’ll be taken back to Ulaanbaatar. The urban chaos will feel even louder now, but this time you’ll be able to crawl back into your memory of those quiet nights under the Milky Way, listening to the wind blow through the grass. 

BY Olivia Louden
A San Diego native, Olivia left home three years ago to live on the road. Since then, she's had homebases everywhere from Quebec to England to New Orleans, but she always ends up back on the West Coast. When she's not hiking through the desert or the woods, she can usually be found exploring her current city and scoping out the best bars and coffee shops.

The Most Expensive Mistake Mongolian Companies Keep Making And Calling It a Hiring Decision (BLOG) www.lambda.global

A bad hire costs up to 30% of that employee’s first-year salary. In a market where senior management earns 4.37 million MNT per month, that number gets large very fast. Organizations are absorbing this cost constantly, and almost none of them are measuring it. Here is a number that most companies do not know about […]

The Most Expensive Mistake Mongolian Companies Keep Making And Calling It a Hiring Decision.
A bad hire costs up to 30% of that employee’s first-year salary. In a market where senior management earns 4.37 million MNT per month, that number gets large very fast. Organizations are absorbing this cost constantly, and almost none of them are measuring it.

Here is a number that most companies do not know about their own operations: the precise cost of the last person they hired who did not work out. Not the salary paid during the tenure. Not just the recruitment fee. The full number, including the management time absorbed, the productivity lost by the team around them, the clients or projects disrupted, the morale damage, the cost of starting the search again, and the salary of the replacement hire, layered on top of all of it.

Almost no Mongolian organization tracks this figure. Almost every Mongolian organization is paying it.

The global research on bad hires is unambiguous: a poor hiring decision costs between 30% and 150% of the employee’s annual salary, depending on seniority and how long the situation persists before action is taken. For a mid-level manager in Mongolia earning 3 million MNT per month, a failed hire that lasts eight months before being resolved carries a total organizational cost, visible and invisible, of anywhere between 10 and 36 million MNT. For a C-suite appointment that does not work out after a year, the number is multiples of that. These are not edge cases. They are the ordinary, recurring consequence of a hiring process that most Mongolian companies still treat as less important than the decisions the hire will be making.

What a Bad Hire Actually Costs – Beyond the Obvious

The direct costs of a failed hire are the ones organizations notice: recruitment spend, salary paid, and, where applicable, severance. These are real, and in a market where executive search fees for senior roles can run 15 to 20% of annual compensation, they are significant. A CFO placed at a 100 million MNT annual package carries a search fee alone of 15 to 20 million MNT. If that hire fails within twelve months, the organization pays that fee again on the replacement search.

But the indirect costs are where the real damage accumulates and where Mongolian organizations consistently underestimate their exposure.

42 days average time a position sits open globally after a vacancy occurs during which productivity loss begins immediately (SHRM, 2024)

Lost productivity is the first and largest invisible cost. A new hire reaches full productivity on average within six to eight months. During that period, the organization is paying full salary for partial output. If the hire is wrong, if the skills, the cultural fit, or the judgment are not what the interview process suggested, that productivity deficit extends indefinitely, while the cost of addressing it grows with every week of delay. In Mongolia’s competitive sectors, where teams are lean and individual contribution is high-leverage, a single underperforming hire in a senior role can slow a department’s entire output for a quarter or more.

Team morale is the second cost, and the hardest to quantify. When a hire is visibly wrong, when a team can see that a manager lacks competence, that a senior professional is not pulling their weight, that a leader is creating friction rather than removing it, the people around that hire absorb the consequences daily. They pick up the slack. They work around the dysfunction. They start, quietly, to reassess whether an organization that makes decisions like this is one they want to stay in. In a market where, globally, 51% of employees are actively watching or seeking new jobs, the ripple effect of a bad hire on the people already in place is not a soft risk. It is a hard one.

A Mongolian logistics company hired a regional operations director through an informal referral in 2023. Within four months, three of his direct reports had handed in resignations, citing management style. The company replaced the director eight months into his tenure. Total estimated cost, including the three replacement hires and the projects delayed during the transition approximately 85 million MNT. The original search had cost nothing; the hire came through a contact. The lesson was more expensive than any search fee would have been.

Why It Keeps Happening

Mongolia’s bad hire problem is not primarily a competency problem. It is a process problem. Specifically, it is the result of three consistent failures that appear, with remarkable regularity, in how Mongolian organizations approach senior and mid-senior appointments.

The first is speed, pressure overriding rigor. When a role becomes vacant, the organization feels the operational gap immediately, and the impulse is to fill it as quickly as possible. Timelines compress. Reference checks become cursory. The structured evaluation that would identify a misalignment between the candidate’s actual capabilities and the role’s real demands gets skipped or shortened. The hire is made. The problem that was visible in a proper assessment process emerges six months later at considerably greater cost.

The second is over-reliance on the interview performance. Mongolia’s hiring culture places significant weight on the interview as the primary evaluation mechanism. A candidate who presents well, who is articulate, who knows the right things to say about strategy and leadership, who has the right institutional affiliations, can move through a Mongolian hiring process with very little scrutiny of whether they have actually done what they are claiming to have done. Structured reference conversations, practical assessments, and competency-based evaluation frameworks are still not standard practice across most Mongolian organizations. The interview room rewards performance, not necessarily performance in the role.

The third is the most culturally specific, the connection override. A referral from within the network of a board member or a senior executive carries an informal authority that often bypasses evaluation entirely. The hire is made because of who vouches for them, not what an independent assessment reveals. In a small professional community like Ulaanbaatar’s, this mechanism is understandable. It is also statistically the source of a disproportionate share of the bad hires that are most damaging, because the relationship layer that enabled the hire also makes it harder to address when the hire fails.

What Structured Hiring Actually Prevents

The case for structured executive search is frequently made on the grounds of candidate quality, finding a better person for the role. That case is true but incomplete. The more precise argument is that structured search prevents specific, calculable categories of organizational cost that informal hiring consistently produces.

A properly run search process for a senior role includes a thorough role definition before any candidate is evaluated, a step that, in informal hiring, rarely happens. Organizations that skip this step often discover, three months into a hire, that the role they described to the candidate was not actually the role they needed filled. The resulting misalignment is not the candidate’s fault. It is a design failure that a structured process would have caught.

It includes independent reference conversations that go beyond the references the candidate provides, conversations with people who have managed, worked alongside, or been managed by the candidate, conducted by someone with no stake in validating the hire. It includes competency-based evaluation against criteria defined before any name is attached to the process. And it includes a candidate pool that extends beyond the organization’s existing network, which is the only mechanism that guarantees the best available person is being considered, rather than the most available known person.

30% minimum cost of a failed hire as a percentage of first-year salary rising to 150% for senior roles (SHRM/Wellhub, 2025)

XacBank’s adoption of psychometric and cognitive assessments as part of its interview process is one of the more sophisticated hiring practices visible among Mongolian financial institutions, which reflects an understanding that interview performance is not a sufficient proxy for role performance. Organizations that have invested in more rigorous evaluation are not just finding better candidates. They are avoiding the cost of the wrong ones.

The Calculation Every Mongolian CEO Should Run

Before the next senior hire, consider running the actual numbers. Take the monthly salary of the role. Multiply by twelve. Take 30% of that figure as the floor cost of a failed hire, recognizing that for senior roles and extended bad-hire situations, the real number is considerably higher. Add the search fee for the replacement hire. Add a rough estimate of the management time and productivity loss your team will absorb if the hire is wrong. Compare that total to the cost of a properly structured search process that reduces the probability of that outcome.

In almost every case, the math is not close. The cost of getting it wrong dwarfs the cost of getting it right. The question is not whether Mongolian organizations can afford structured, rigorous hiring. It is whether they can afford to keep doing without it.

Lambda. Global’s executive search practice is built on precisely this premise. In a market of 1.2 million active workers with a projected shortfall of 240,000 by 2035, the organizations that will have the strongest leadership teams in five years are the ones making the best hiring decisions right now, not the fastest ones.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

1.  Wellhub – Cost Per Hire: Averages, Deciding Factors, and How to Calculate (2025)

Bad hire costs up to 30% of first-year salary; hidden costs include lost productivity, morale impact, and repeat recruitment spend.

https://wellhub.com/en-us/blog/talent-acquisition-and-retention/cost-of-hire
2.  Spark Hire – The Real Cost of Employee Turnover (January 2025)

42-day average to fill open position (SHRM 2024); 6-8 months to full productivity; culture and morale impact of turnover.

https://www.sparkhire.com/learn/screen-candidates/the-cost-of-employee-turnover
3.  High5Test – US Employee Turnover Statistics 2024–2025

51% of employees are watching or seeking new jobs; engagement and culture top reasons for leaving (37%); turnover cost frameworks.

20+ U.S. Employee Turnover Statistics (2024-2025)
4.  9CV9 Blog – How to Find and Hire Employees in Mongolia in 2025

Rise in employee turnover in mining and IT; XacBank psychometric assessment practice; long-term aspiration screening approaches.

How to Find and Hire Employees in Mongolia in 2025
5.  9CV9 Blog – State of Recruitment and Hiring in Mongolia 2025

83,700 new hires projected for 2025; senior management avg 4.37M MNT/month; 1.2M active workforce; 240,000 shortfall by 2035.

The State of Recruitment and Hiring in Mongolia in 2025
6.  Rivermate – Recruitment in Mongolia (February 2026)

Poor hiring decisions linked to turnover and productivity loss; salary variation by industry, experience, and location in Mongolia.

https://www.rivermate.com/guides/mongolia/recruitment

Mongolia Successfully Tests Intercity Freight Transport with Heavy Electric Trucks for the First Time www.open.kg

Mongolia continues the active implementation of the government program "Liberate" (Чөлөөлье), especially within the framework of the "Green Hub" (Ногоон өртөө) initiative. The companies "Monlogistics Group" and "Newcom" recently conducted successful tests, becoming the first in the country to carry out long-distance freight transport using a fully electric heavy-duty truck. This event took place from August 7 to 9, 2026, when the electric truck covered the route Ulaanbaatar – Zamyn-Uud – Ulaanbaatar, with a total length of about 1400 kilometers.

Technical Specifications and Environmental Impact

Equipment used: The tests involved a modern electric tractor with a high-capacity lithium iron phosphate battery.

Payload capacity: The total weight of the truck and trailer was 40 tons, with a useful payload capacity of up to 25 tons, which meets the standards for commercial freight transport.

Reduction of CO₂ emissions: Replacing a diesel truck with an electric one avoids the emission of about 1.2–1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per trip. With regular transport, this can lead to significant savings in harmful emissions amounting to hundreds of tons per year.

Economic benefit: The electricity consumption per kilometer was significantly lower than the cost of diesel fuel, highlighting the feasibility of transitioning to the electrification of the commercial vehicle fleet.

The electrification of the transport sector is becoming particularly important against the backdrop of price instability for traditional fuels. Such measures will help reduce the country's dependence on imported fuels and lubricants and stabilize transportation costs.

We thank the teams at "Monlogistics Group" and "Newcom" for their initiative, courage in testing new technologies, and successful adaptation to the local conditions of Mongolia.

Mongolia rations gasoline as fuel shortages send drivers into long lines www.intellinews.com

In a city where getting stuck in traffic can already turn a short drive into a test of patience, Mongolians are facing a new question before they even start their engines: Will there be gasoline when they get to the pump?

Long lines have formed at gas stations across Ulaanbaatar as a nationwide fuel shortage forces the government to ration gasoline and scramble for new supplies.

Since early August, vehicles have been allowed to buy gasoline only on alternating days based on their licence plate numbers. Purchases initially were limited to 50,000 Mongolian tughrik (just short of $14), or about 14 litres (3.7 gallons), and authorities banned drivers from filling external fuel containers at gas stations.

The US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar said on August 7 that it was aware of long lines at fuel stations and that many stations were waiting for additional deliveries. The embassy said the shortages were nationwide and advised US citizens to delay nonessential travel, limit long-distance trips and consider moving up planned departures from Mongolia.

For tour operators who take visitors deep into Mongolia's countryside, the shortages have added another logistical hurdle to already lengthy journeys.

"It is terrible," said Suren Bat-Tur, a local tour operator who runs jeep trips for backpackers. He said some drivers had spent the night at gasoline stations only to receive a limited amount of fuel.

Bat-Tur said his four vehicles were in the countryside with tourists and that the drivers were having difficulty finding gasoline. Bat-Tur told his drivers that the amount of gasoline they could buy was less important than maintaining the quality of their tours. 

The price of gasoline has also risen. Bat-Tur said AI-92 gasoline, Mongolia's most widely used grade, was selling for about 2,850 tughrik per litre on August 9, up from about 2,550 tugriks 20 days earlier and 2,350 tugriks two months ago.

By August 10, Bat-Tur said, gasoline stations had begun allowing tourist vehicles to fill up without the previous purchase limit.

The restrictions reflect the growing pressure on a country that relies heavily on imported petroleum products to keep its cars, trucks and mining industry running.

Industry and Mineral Resources Minister Damdinnyam Gongor has portrayed the shortages as part of a broader global energy crisis, citing disruptions stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict between the United States and Iran.

Mongolia continues to receive gasoline from Russia, by far its main fuel supplier. According to the state-run Montsame news agency, more than 10,000 tonnes of AI-92 gasoline entered Mongolia through the Sukhbaatar border crossing between August 1 and August 5, with additional shipments on the way.

But the government has been seeking additional suppliers as prices rise and geopolitical disruptions put pressure on fuel markets.

In a July 31 Facebook post, Damdinnyam said Mongolian fuel importers had begun negotiations with South Korea's GS Caltex over fuel quotas, prices and transportation, with an agreement to receive the first products by the end of August.

Prime Minister Uchral Nyam-Osor also met, on August 7, with the head of PetroChina Dachin Tamsag, a subsidiary of China's state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. 

PetroChina Dachin Tamsag agreed to supply 6,000 tonnes of AI-92 gasoline to Mongolia this month. Uchral asked the company to increase and stabilise supplies to 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes a month and seek ways to reduce prices.

On August 7, Damdinnyam said he was heading to Moscow for what he described as his ninth trip in the past year in his capacity as minister to negotiate fuel supplies. He also said he would travel to Kazakhstan and Beijing after his Moscow visit to discuss fuel supplies.

Bat-Tur said the fuel crisis was drawing mixed reactions from Mongolians.

"Some people are angry with the government and some people understand why this is happening," he said.

The government is also trying to build larger fuel reserves to cushion the country against future shortages.

Eighteen companies have begun building or expanding 22 petroleum storage facilities with the help of government-backed loans, officials said. One facility under construction in Ulaanbaatar is expected to add enough capacity to cover about 13 days of the city's AI-92 consumption when it opens later this month.

Another storage project in Ulaanbaatar, planned to be Mongolia's largest, is expected to add another eight to nine days of national fuel consumption when completed in 2027.

The government says the projects eventually will give Mongolia enough storage capacity to hold up to three months of national fuel consumption.

The government is also seeking to reduce its dependence on imported fuel over the longer term.

Prime Minister Uchral was in Dornogovi province on August 10 touring the oil refinery under construction there, as officials pushed to get the long-delayed project operating by 2028.

The government said construction of a 527-kilometre (327-mile) oil pipeline linking the refinery, the country’s first. to an oil field in eastern Mongolia is more than 90% complete. The pipeline will be Mongolia's first long-distance oil pipeline and is intended to ensure a steady supply of crude to the refinery.

Uchral said construction had been stalled for about two years because of financing and legal problems but that those issues had been resolved. About 4,500 engineers and technicians are now working on the project around the clock, the government said.

The $1.7bn refinery is designed to process 1.5mn tonnes of crude oil annually. Once operational, it is expected to produce enough fuel to meet about 55% of Mongolia's domestic oil needs.

But the long-term strategy offers little relief for motorists waiting in line at gas stations. 

For Bat-Tur, the shortage is not simply a matter of finding enough fuel to keep his vehicles moving. It is about making sure the tourists he takes into the countryside can still have the experience they came for.  

“It is important to keep the tour quality,” he said.

Views Exchanged with ADB on Education Sector Reform and Cooperation www.montsame.mn

Enkh-Amgalan Luvsantseren, Minister of Education, met with John Juhyun Jeong, the newly appointed Asian Development Bank (ADB) Country Director for Mongolia. The Minister expressed his gratitude to the Country Director for prioritizing the education sector and choosing the Ministry of Education for his first official meeting following his appointment.

During the meeting, the Minister presented the ongoing reforms aimed at improving the quality and accessibility of education, narrowing the educational gap between urban and rural areas, supporting teachers' professional development, enhancing school management and evaluation systems, and accelerating the digital transition of the education sector.

The two sides also discussed strengthening the quality of vocational education and training to build a skills system aligned with labor market demands. Furthermore, they addressed developing a science, technology, and innovation learning environment at the general education level, preventing gender-based violence in school and dormitory settings, and improving the protection and support systems available to students.

In addition, the Mongolian side expressed its expectation to finalize and sign a USD 130 million project loan agreement for the second additional financing of the education sector during the ADB President's visit to Mongolia in September of this year.

“Foreigners who learn about Chinggis Khaan through history and The HU through music are becoming more interested in the Mongolian language” www.gogo.mn

The 13th International Congress of Mongolists began on August 10, 2026. Scholars attending the congress emphasized that Mongolians need to master their native language in order to preserve, carry forward, and share their rich cultural heritage.

Hungarian Mongol studies scholar Agnes Birtalan said, “I conduct research in a number of fields, including the Mongolian language and culture, religious studies, and ethnography, in Budapest.

In order for Mongolians to understand the heritage passed down from their ancestors, they must first have a strong command of their native language. Although the Mongolian language has a very rich vocabulary, most people communicate using only a limited number of words. Mongolians have preserved their traditional culture for hundreds of years. I would like to emphasize that if the Mongolian language is forgotten in the future, this great heritage will also be lost.”

L.Tserenchunt, senior lecturer of Mongolian language at Indiana University in the United States who was awarded the title and badge of “State Honored Teacher.”

She said, “I began teaching Mongolian abroad in 1993. Eleven years later, I was invited to Indiana University in the United States as a visiting scholar to teach Mongolian. Over the years, I have taught the Mongolian language to approximately 600–700 students.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the Mongolian language among young foreigners who have learned about Chinggis Khaan through history and discovered The HU through music. However, scholarships provided by the U.S. government have decreased significantly in recent years, which has negatively affected these students’ opportunities to study Mongolian.

I have noticed that we often take pride in calling ourselves descendants of Chinggis Khaan. However, our identity is defined by our native language and culture. It is not enough for a Mongolian to simply say, ‘I am Mongolian’ without having a good knowledge of the Mongolian language.

There are many cases in which children watch various online channels without receiving enough exposure to content in their native language. It is very important for parents and guardians to provide children with content in Mongolian and teach them riddles, proverbs, and other elements of traditional knowledge. Children should learn Mongolian while their brains are still developing. This is essential”. 

Maria Petrova, a Mongol studies researcher from Russia who was awarded the “Order of the Polar Star” medal, said, “I study the Mongolian language, literature, history, culture, and ethnography. I first entered the Mongolian Language Department at Leningrad University in 1981. Since then, I have been studying the Mongolian language and literature for more than 40 years.

I believe modern Mongolian literature has developed very well. I think writer G.Ayurzana has made an important contribution to the development of modernist literature. His novel Guramsan Tsadig opened a new page in Mongolian literature. The historical novel The Legend of the Shaman is also a very interesting and worthwhile book to read. I hope Mongolians will read these works and learn more about the rich and profound heritage of their native language.”

The three-day congress brings together 546 scholars from more than 30 countries. Organizers said the congress provides an important opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with Mongolian scholars, seek solutions to challenges facing Mongolian heritage and culture, and promote Mongolia’s cultural heritage to the wider public.