Customs General Administration
Border customs authority
Mongolia's central customs authority: a government implementing agency responsible for implementing customs legislation nationwide, controlling imports and exports, assessing and collecting customs duties and import taxes, compiling customs statistics and combating customs offences (Customs Law of Mongolia; Mongolian Customs General Administration profile, Devex, summarising customs.gov.mn). Its border work covers the coal and import flows through crossings such as Zamyn-Uud on the Chinese border and Sukhbaatar on the Russian border, the two crossings through which the majority of international and transit trade passes (UNESCAP, Development of seamless rail-based intermodal transport services in Northeast and Central Asia).
Mongolian Customs marks 20 October 1921 as Customs Day, when a rule on imposing customs duties on external and internal trade took effect in Niislel Khuree. The service moved between the Ministry of Finance and other ministries for most of the twentieth century, operated as the Customs General Administration from 1996 to 2015, was briefly merged into a General Authority for Customs and Taxation in 2016, and has operated again as the Customs General Administration since July 2016 (Customs General Administration history, via Devex).
PEOPLE
Regjiibuu Otgonjargal
Director General - named as Director General in World Customs Organization reporting in April 2023 and in March 2024
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Gelegjamts Enkhtaivan
Deputy Director General - named as Deputy Director General in World Customs Organization reporting in March 2024 and as co-chair of the CAREC Customs Cooperation Committee annual meeting on 5 June in Ulaanbaatar
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Asralt Batbold
Chairman of the Mongolian Customs General Administration in 2020, when the Mongolia Trade Information Portal was launched (IFC press release, 2020)
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RECORD
Legal basis and system - DOCUMENTED
The Customs Law provides that the customs system consists of the customs central administration and regional customs administrations and offices under it, that the central administration is a state administrative authority responsible for implementing customs legislation nationwide, and that its Director General is appointed by the Government on the recommendation of the cabinet minister responsible for customs matters (Customs Law, Articles 265-267, legalinfo.mn).
Rules of origin workshop, March 2024 - DOCUMENTED
The World Customs Organization held its inaugural National Workshop on Rules of Origin for the Mongolian Customs General Administration in Ulaanbaatar from 25 to 29 March 2024, funded by the Customs Cooperation Fund of Japan, to train officials on applying free trade agreements including the WTO, the Japan-Mongolia Economic Partnership Agreement in force since 2016 and the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, which Mongolia joined in 2020 (World Customs Organization, April 2024).
Coal exported without customs registration, 2022 - DOCUMENTED
In October 2022 the Government revealed that coal was being illegally transported across the Chinese border without customs registration. The disclosures, centred on Erdenes-Tavan Tolgoi, triggered the coal theft protests and investigations in which customs officials were among those identified by the anti-corruption agency (East Asia Forum, 17 April 2023).
ALLEGATION - the customs inspector bribery arrest
The Ulaanbaatar Post, reported via the Mongolian Business Database, reported that a state customs inspector identified only as D.N. was apprehended by Independent Authority Against Corruption investigators while allegedly accepting a bribe of 50 million MNT from the director of MN Post LLC, a freight forwarding company, in return for preferential treatment, and that both were under investigation under Criminal Code provisions on money laundering, abuse of power and accepting a bribe. Decode Mongolia has not verified this claim; it is published as reported.
A filled seal is documented. An open seal is an allegation, source named.
How to read this page. Every line names its source. A line marked ALLEGATION is a claim already published by the named source and already in the public record. Decode Mongolia republishes it as reported, with the source named, and has not verified it. An allegation is not a finding, and nothing on this page is proof of wrongdoing.