몽골과 러시아 간의 경제협력 현황과 주요 과제

Current state and main issues of economic cooperation between Mongolia and Russia

Diplomatic between Mongolia and Russia has developed rapidly from “Good Neighbor Relations” in 1993 to “Comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2019 while overcoming the stagnation during the 1990s through active political exchanges. In order to strengthen strategic cooperation, they have actively promoted policy sharing, which could lead to economic viability. With shared policies and political support, the two countries could increase bilateral trade to $10 billion. Infrastructure, such as the railroad and road transmission networks linking the two countries, was also expected to improve. Mongolia expected to increase exports of key commodities such as meat and knitted fabrics. And Russia has several key fields that it considers important in order to maintain its influence on Mongolia including the transportation sector such as railways, fuel supply and distribution, energy industry such as electricity, and mining industry such as uranium. In recent high-level talks between the two countries, the main agenda is to strengthen economic cooperation in these areas, namely, cooperation between state-owned enterprises, promotion of large-scale projects, human resources training, and expansion of capital investment. In some cases, they have restricted investment by foreign companies or private entities in related businesses. However, bilateral trade between the two countries barely reached to 2 billion US$. It seems that a different approach is needed to visualize the results of large-scale development projects and lead to trade expansion. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent trade relationship between Mongolia and Russia and major policy projects under the premise that the outcome of economic cooperation between the two countries will be shown in trade and investment relations.