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MongoliaParticipation in Comecon
Entey into Comecon was a great boon to Mongolia's economic
development, enabling it to secure increased amounts of foreign
investment, assistance, and technical cooperation; to expand
foreign trade markets; to raise product quality to international
standards; and to coordinate economic planning better in order to
direct the specialization and development the of the economy
under "socialist economic integration." Mongolia coordinated its
five-year plans with Comecon's five-year multilateral cooperation
plans as a participant in Comecon's Cooperation in the Sphere of
Planning Activity Committee as well as its Science and Technology
Cooperation Committee. These committees also drew up multilateral
long-term, special cooperation programs in the areas of
transportation, food, energy, and consumer goods, which included
development projects in Mongolia, such as the thermal electric
power plant in Baga Nuur. Mongolia also participated in Comecon
commissions for agriculture, coal industry, electric power, food
industry, geology, light industry, nonferrous metallurgy, and
transportation, and it cooperated in Comecon efforts in
construction, currency-finance, foreign trade, health care,
standardization, statistics, telecommunications, and postal
communications.
Mongolia also received assistance from Comecon on a
multilateral basis. Comecon financed the activities of the
Comecon International Geological Expedition and the construction
of a number of scientific, communications, and cultural
facilities in Mongolia. As a member of Comecon's International
Bank for Economic Cooperation and the International Investment
Bank, Mongolia was eligible for, and took advantage of, loans at
preferential rates. Mongolia also benefited from "incentive
prices" for basic imported commodities; such commodities as fuel
were imported at lower prices than those charged to Comecon's
more developed East European countries
(see Foreign Assistance, Investment, and Joint Ventures
, this ch.).
Data as of June 1989
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