In the first four months of 2021, Mongolia traded with 129 countries from all over the world, and the total trade turnover reached USD 4.5 billion, of which USD 2.5 billion were exports and USD 2.0 billion were imports. The total foreign trade turnover increased by USD 1.5 billion (50.6%), where exports increased by USD 1.1 billion (81.8%) and imports increased by USD 374.9 million (23.6%) compared to the same period of previous year. In April 2021, exports reached USD 496.3 million, decreased by USD 169.6 million (25.5%) and imports reached USD 437.5 million, decreased by USD 163.9 million (27.2%) compared to the previous month.

The foreign trade balance was in surplus of USD 535.4 million in the first four months of 2021, compared with deficit of USD 212.7 million in the first 4 months of 2020. Trade with China reached USD 3.1 billion in the first 4 months of 2021, which is 68.7% of the total trade turnover.

Bituminous coal and copper concentrates accounted for 30.5% and 33.5% of total exports to China, respectively, and bituminous coal accounted for 95.0% of total export to Singapore, while gold accounted for 85.6% of total export to Republic of Korea.

In the first four months of 2021, USD 1.1 billion increase in exports from the previous year was resulted from USD 147.6 million increase in Iron ores and concentrates, USD 287.7 million increase in copper concentrates exports and USD 430.2 million increase in coal exports. In April 2021, USD 169.6 million decrease in exports was mainly due to coal exports volume reached 710.6 thousand tons and decreased by 1.5 million tons from 2.2 million tons in March 2021.

In the first four months of 2021, 38.3% of the total imports were from China, 27.5% -- from Russia, 7.1% -- from Japan, 4.1% -- from Republic of Korea and 3.4% -- from USA, which are accounting for 80.5% of the total imports. In the first 4 months of 2021, 51.3% of the total imports from Russia -- petroleum products, 67.2% of the total imports from Japan -- cars, and 5.8% of the total imports from China -- electricity, 16.5% -- trucks and 77.7% -- imports of other products. The USD 374.9 million increase in imports from the previous year was mainly due to USD 42.1 million increase in wheat, USD 97.6 million increase in trucks, USD 30.3 million increase in diesel and USD 19.1 million increase in cars.

Exports of mineral products, food products, and vegetable origin products made up 91.7 percent of the total export. On the other hand, 65.7 percent of the total imports were mineral products, machinery, equipment, electric appliances, transport vehicle and its spare parts and food products.

Source: National Statistics Office