Mongolia traded with 141 countries in the first seven months of 2021 and recorded total foreign trade turnover of 8.6 billion USD, reported the National Statistics Office on Wednesday.

Export and import reached 4.7 billion USD and 3.8 billion USD respectively, resulting in a surplus of 0.9 million USD.

Compared to the same period of last year, total foreign trade turnover rose by 1.8 billion USD (27.5 percent), export by 953 million USD (25.2 percent), and import by 896.1 million USD (30.5 percent).

In July 2021, export amounted to 630.3 million USD and import to 577.1 million USD, leading to a surplus of 53.2 million USD. Both export and import declined, by 20 percent and 12.5 percent, from the previous month.

China accounted for 61.7 percent (5.8 billion USD) of Mongolia’s total foreign trade this year. Of all goods exported to China, 24 percent was coal, 38 percent copper concentrate, and the rest were other types of goods. Around 99 percent of all exports to Switzerland and 80.6 percent of exports to South Korea was gold.

The National Statistics Office assessed that the yearly 27.5 percent jump was primarily driven by increased exports of iron ore and concentrate (up by 320 million USD year-on-year), copper concentrate (up by 762.6 million USD), and coal (up by 234.1 million USD).

As for import, key trading countries were China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and Germany, respectively accounting for 38.9 percent, 26.9 percent, 6.8 percent, 4.4 percent and 3.5 percent of total import, according to the report. While half of imports from Russia was petrol, nearly 70 percent of imports from Japan was passenger cars, and 15.2 percent of imports from China was trucks, and 4.9 percent was energy.

Wheat import grew by 40.1 million USD, truck imports by 157.9 million USD, diesel fuel imports by 83 million USD, and passenger car imports by 48.9 million USD as of July 2021, leading the total import to rise by 30.5 percent compared to the same period of last year.