Mongolia : Black market gold

Minerals represent more than 80% of Mongolia's exports, a proportion expected to eventually rise to 95%. About 3,000 mining licences have been issued. Mining is continuing to rise as a major industry of Mongolia as evidenced by number of Chinese, Russian and Canadian firms opening and starting mining business in Mongolia.

In summer 2009 the government negotiated an "Investment Agreement" with Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines to develop the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposit, the biggest foreign-investment project in Mongolia, expected to account for one-third of Mongolia's GDP by 2020. In March 2011, six big mining companies prepared to bid for the Tavan Tolgoi area, the world's largest untapped coal deposit. According to Erdenes MGL, the government body in-charge of Tavan Tolgoi, ArcelorMittal, Vale, Xstrata, U.S. coal miner Peabody, a consortium of Chinese energy firm Shenhua and Japan's Mitsui & Co, and a separate consortium of Japanese, South Korean and Russian firms are the preferred bidders.

In Mongolia a growing black market gold

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: here comes the eastern market for gold. Over the past five years, with the decline in stock of this precious metal legal and the increase in the black market, the "ninja miners" (so called because of their green baskets, similar to tortoise shells) of these areas have grown their turnover. The entire production process is, in fact, controlled by them, through a plant about 100 kilometers from the Mongolian capital: after extracting the gold from the mud, the refining, the melt and to check its purity. They put it on the market in large pieces a few millimeters, but pure 97 per cent, which can cost $ 6,000. How many of these are sold on the common market, and how much, they end up in a matter of smuggling, it is not possible to know.