Title: Mineral-Rich Mongolia Rapidly Becoming 'Mine-golia' : NPR
Headings: Mineral-Rich Mongolia Rapidly Becoming 'Mine-golia'
Mongolia Booms
Mineral-Rich Mongolia Rapidly Becoming 'Mine-golia'
Doubling GDP In A Decade
Opportunity In The Gobi
Avoiding 'Dutch Disease'
Threat To Traditional Industry
Question Of Distributing The Wealth
Fund public radio's future

Content: Nelson Hsu/NPR
Doubling GDP In A Decade
Much of the focus these days is on Oyu Tolgoi, a mega-mine in Mongolia's South Gobi province, about 50 miles north of the Chinese border. The mine — owned by international mining giant Rio Tinto, Canada's Ivanhoe Mines and the Mongolian government — is scheduled to produce its first copper ore in June and grow dramatically over the next five years. Cameron McCrae, Oyu Tolgoi's Australian chief executive, estimates that the mine will be the world's third-largest copper and gold mine. The mine is playing a substantial economic role even before it's operational, McCrae notes. "At the moment, during construction, we probably make up 30 percent of the GDP of the country," he says. Tuvshintugs Batdelger, who runs an economic think tank at the National University of Mongolia, says mining is helping to drive the economy of this Central Asian nation at an incredible pace. "In the coming 10 years, average GDP growth will be 12 percent," he says. Even when you factor in inflation, "GDP in real terms more than doubles in 10 years' time." Opportunity In The Gobi
Mining's impacts are visible throughout much of Mongolia, which is wedged between China and Russia and is nearly the size of Alaska. Hummers roll past the Louis Vuitton store and columned Soviet facades in Ulan Bator, the capital.