Chapter 11
Other Places, Other Opportunities: Mongolia, Argentina, Russia, Turkey, and Central Asia
We're coming close to the end of our globe-trotting investment field trip. There are many more markets and many more opportunities we won't be able to visit this time around. They will have to wait. Nevertheless, there are a few more markets that I want to tell you about before we make our way back home.
Let's start in the “Land of the Blue Sky.”
The story of Mongolia's resurgence is mouthwatering for investors for one reason. Mongolia is rich in natural resources, and it sits next to the world's most voracious consumer of those resources, China.
Beneath Mongolia's rugged mountains and slumbering sands lie huge untapped resources of copper, coal, gold, uranium, iron ore, oil, and more, only recently discovered. In 2010, this country exported about $2 billion worth of minerals. But based on mining project startups, exports ought to grow to $20–80 billion per year. That's a 10- to 40-fold increase in just a couple of years. Some $30–50 billion in new investments are set to flow to this economy in the next few years.
But there is a long way to go. Production of coal, iron ore, and crude oil should rise ten fold over the next 10 years. The 10 largest deposits are worth over $1.3 trillion. For perspective, Mongolia has a $4.5 billion economy. (Yes, billion.)
Oyu Tolgoi is one of those big deposits. It is the world's largest new copper and gold mine, with some 80 billion pounds of copper ...
