Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. In the first 4 months of 2020, Mongolia traded with 125 countries from all over the world and the total trade turnover reached USD 3.0 billion, of which USD 1.4 billion were exports and USD 1.6 billion were imports.

Total foreign trade turnover decreased by USD 1.3 billion (30.8%), of which exports decreased by USD 1.1 billion (45.3%) and imports decreased by USD 179.9 million (10.2%) compared to the same period of the previous year. In April 2020, exports and imports reached to USD 337.8 million and USD 424.8 million, respectively. Compared to the previous month, exports increased by USD 72.7 million and imports increased by USD 13.2 million.

The foreign trade balance was in deficit of USD 212.7 million, while it was in surplus of USD 745.8 million in the first 4 months of 2019, and decreased by USD 958.5 million from the same period of 2019.

Our two neighbors, China and Russia have the highest shares in total foreign trade turnover and trade with China reached USD 1.7 billion in the first 4 months of 2020, which is 58.5% of total trade turnover.

Exports to China accounted for 89.5% of total exports. Bituminous coal and copper concentrates accounted for 26.3% and 39.6% of total exports to China, while gold accounted for 83.2% of goods exported to United Kingdom, fluorspar accounted for 92.1% of total export good to Russian Federation and animal combed hair accounted for 57.8% of goods exported to Italy.

The USD 1.1 billion decrease in export was resulted from the decreases in exports of USD 115.6 million in gold, USD 215.2 million in copper concentrates and USD 629.0 million in coal.

In the first 4 months of 2020, 31.8% of the total imports was from China, 30.1% was from Russia, 7.8% was from Japan, 5.2% was from USA and 4.2% was from Republic of Korea, which are accounting for 79.0% of the total import.

The 52.3% of the total imports from Russia was petroleum products, 61.2% of the total imports from Japan was cars, and 8.2% of the total imports from China was electricity, 3.7% was trucks and 88.1% was imports of other products from China.

The USD 179.9 million decrease in imports from the same period of previous year was mainly due to USD 19.8 million decrease in gasoline imports and USD 58.6 million decrease in diesel fuel imports.

Exports of mineral products, textiles and textile articles, natural or cultured stones, precious metals jewelry made up 95.9 percent of the total export. On the other hand, 66.3 percent of the total imports was mineral products, machinery, equipment, electric appliances, transport vehicle and its spare parts and food products.

Source: National Statistics Office