World Bank says Mongolia supplies about 40 per cent of the world's raw cashmere but processes only a fifth at home

Background

The World Bank Group's Mongolia Country Private Sector Diagnostic identifies reforms in cashmere, energy and critical minerals that it says need no large fiscal outlay.
Mongolia supplies about 40 per cent of the world's raw cashmere, but only 20 per cent is processed domestically and most of that leaves as semi-processed fibre.
Turning the fibre into finished garments could raise the value of the same raw material by more than 200 per cent, and reforms could draw 150 million dollars of private investment and up to 5,000 jobs by 2030.
Mongolia's technical potential is put at 700 GW of solar and 400 GW of wind, about 300 times its current domestic energy consumption, while renewables supply roughly 10 per cent of electricity today.
Less than 15 per cent of legally available land is under exploration licences for copper, lithium, rare earths and graphite; fixing that could bring 200 to 500 million dollars of exploration investment.
The report notes Mongolia tripled GDP per capita over three decades and reached upper-middle-income status in 2024.