Overview of best prospect sectors, major infrastructure projects, significant government procurements and business opportunities.
Last Published: 8/8/2017

Mining Just Scratching the Surface:  Over 6,000 deposits of approximately 80 minerals have been mapped in Mongolia ― among them gold, copper, coal, uranium, rare earth oxides, iron ore, oil, tungsten, molybdenum, and fluorspar.  Much of Mongolia's land mass has yet to be surveyed for deposits.  Contiguous China provides a ready market for Mongolia’s mineral wealth.  Mongolia hopes to fully implement a transit agreement with China affording Mongolia preferred access to onward-shipping facilities.  Obstacles to full realization of the Oyu Tolgoi copper/gold mega-mine having been overcome, hundreds of procurement opportunities to supply Oyu Tolgoi are becoming available. 

Agriculture Value-Added:  Still the backbone of the Mongolian economy, the agriculture sector sorely needs modernization to meet international processing standards and qualify Mongolian meat and other agricultural products for export.

Infrastructure Build-Out:  Mongolia will open a new cargo-focused international airport in Ulaanbaatar in 2018 aimed at establishing a regional transit and logostics hub.  The massive investment needed to create conventional (along with coal gasification and liquifaction) and renewable (hydro, wind, solar) electric power plants in Mongolia would prove warranted should plans to build out a Northeast Asia regional super grid come to fruition.  Periodic discussion of new railroads from Gobi Desert copper, gold, and coal mines to Chinese markets has not led to construction due to slowed commodities markets, lack of available capital, and disagreement over ownership.  A sustained rebound in commodity prices could spur new efforts.  Some Mongolian business and political leaders believe the combined copper output of the Oyu Tolgoi and Erdenet mines would eventually warrant construction of a smelter to enhance the value and lower the shipping costs of copper exports, although China, with a surplus of smelters, is cool to the idea.

Other sectors of a diversifying Mongolian economy with significant potential for growth include:  renewable energy and green technologies; franchising; logistics; and internet technologies, with a focus on cyber security.

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