Status Of Domestic Timber Production:Export And Import Dynamics In Mongolia

Mongolia is a country with very extreme climatic condition comprising8.1%of forest with low population density and animal husbandry is the main traditional occupation. Mongolia wood products trade was confined to Russia before open economy policy in1990. Because distribution of forest was confined to north part of the country along the Russian boarder forming an eco-ton of Siberia taiga and central Asian steppe and also there are only two countries bordering Mongolia.After the open economy China was rapidly growing country in the Asia and importing large quantity of wood products, that time Mongolia was the fourth largest wood products supplier to China. In1999government took action to discourage timber product export resulting almost no timber export from Mongolia.In the circumstances the study of the Mongolia export and import of wood products status is the great interest of the study. Mongolia was the one of the largest timber export and now it is importing wood products from elsewhere. The study is trying to explore the reason behind the change in wood products trade with China. Domestic demand of and trade situation is the most crucial things that guided export and import therefore this study focus on domestic level trade situation.The study used the secondary data available in the internet and consulted concern authority for domestic trade data base. An important community for the study was selected, consulting forestry authority. Rapid Rural appraisal (RRA) techniques were applied to find out local peoples’ perspective regarding timber trade and their present status in forest management. Data processing and analysis reveals that community forest in Altanbulag district is less capable of managing large forest area by small number of households. They need further technical back up from forest authority and seeking support from the people who are not belongs to the community. Force field analysis reveals that there are still some negative forced that must be address to maintain forestry governance and stop illegal timber trade.Study on internal trade reveals that domestic timber production could not cater the fuel wood and timber demand in Mongolia. Domestic production can meet35%of the total demand of forest product therefore import of wood products is growing every year. Wood products export from China and import of Mongolia analysis reveals Mongolia is highly dependent on Chinese wood based products but there is no significant influence of Mongolian export of wood products on Chinese import because Mongolian export is negligible.In two decades Mongolian wood based trade has been transform from exporter country to importer country.