Company registration in Mongolia, the copper-age frontier

Yes - starting a business in Mongolia through an FIE does not necessarily require a visit: registration, charter, and tax filings are handled by power of attorney, and the capital contribution is wired in. Banks prefer to meet a signatory, and work permits require presence, so operating businesses usually plan one trip. We sequence it where it earns the most.

Turnkey registration starts from $2,900; with banking, from $4,900. The $100,000 per foreign shareholder is your contributed working capital, not a fee - it lands in your own account. Renewals with accounting run from $1,500 per year.

Yes and yes: the Investment Law defines a foreign-invested company as requiring at least $100,000 in contributions per foreign shareholder, verified through the bank at registration. Two foreign shareholders mean $200,000. It is the frontier's honest entry ticket - working capital you deploy, but capital you must actually have. Structures with one corporate shareholder keep the ticket to one.

Ten per cent on profits up to MNT 6 billion - which covers most operating companies - and 25% above; VAT at 10%; payroll social contributions around 12.5-14.5% on the employer side. Qualifying small non-mining businesses elect the 90% credit and run near 1%. Dividends paid out carry 20% withholding, and we have planned at that number since the treaty clean-up.

Because Mongolia terminated the treaties that used to lower it - the Netherlands and Luxembourg routes are gone, ended precisely because they were used as conduits. Some remaining treaties still benefit specific ownership structures, and where yours genuinely does, we use it. But the honest base case is 20%, and structures promising otherwise deserve suspicion.

Under the Minerals Law, exploration and mining licences are recorded in a cadastre, strategic deposits carry state-participation rights, and the real risks lie in licence history, boundary conflicts and local agreements. Our diligence starts at the cadastre and ends with the community. Acquiring a licensed LLC is often cleaner than transferring a licence - decided case by case.

Mongolia produces roughly a third of the world's raw cashmere, most of it historically exported raw to China. Policy now pushes processing at home - washing, dehairing, spinning and branding - with financing programmes behind it. For textile operators and brands, a Mongolian processing company sits at the source of some of the world's best fibre, with an openly supportive state.

Banking is competent and concentrated - Khan, TDB, Golomt - with routine dollar operations and real KYC. The tugrik is a commodity currency: it strengthens with coal receipts and weakens when China slows, so we run dollar balances alongside MNT and match invoicing currency to costs. Frontier treasury practice, applied from day one.

Mongolian professional staff is strong - mining built an engineering class - and foreign hires are subject to sector quotas, with permits that follow rather than precede planning. Employer social contributions are modest. Winter logistics and Ulaanbaatar's housing market are the practical constraints expatriate plans should respect.

Two to four weeks to a registered, tax-registered company with a bank account and contributed capital. Work permits add two to six weeks. Mining diligence and licence work run on their own calendars - honest ones we set per asset. The corporate shell is never the bottleneck in Mongolia; the asset work is.