The Mongolian tögrög
Currency · MNT · ₮ · 1 country
A currency reform act of 22 February 1925 created the tögrög, and it reached circulation that December as paper notes and as silver coins weighing 18 grams. The act gave the sole right of issue to the Mongolian Trade and Industrial Bank, a Soviet and Mongolian joint venture that became the Bank of Mongolia in 1954. Tögrög means a circle.
The sign
The ₮ is the sign of the tögrög, encoded in Unicode as U+20AE, TUGRIK SIGN. English spells the name tögrög, tugrug or tugrik. It comes from the Mongolian word for a circle or round object, in other words a coin.
- ISO code
- MNT
- ISO number
- 496
- Subunit
- möngö, 1/100
An amount, written out
₮1,234.50
- ₮1,234.50English
- ₮ 1,234.50MongolianMongolia
The sign in code
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, UTF-8
- HTML
₮₮- CSS
content: "\20AE";- JavaScript
"\u20AE"- UTF-8
0xE2 0x82 0xAE- UTF-16
0x20AE- UTF-32
0x000020AE
Where the Mongolian tugrik is the official currency
Mongolia keeps the tögrög as its currency, and its 1993 notes carry the Soyombo emblem, national ornaments and a colour and size for each value.
About the Mongolian tugrik
What Mongolia paid with before the tögrög
After the People's Revolution of 1921 the newly independent state had no money of its own. Russian and Chinese notes changed hands beside gold and silver coins struck in England, the United States and Mexico, and beside Chinese silver blocks called yumbuu, and livestock served as money too.
In August 1921 the new government set up the lan as a stopgap. One lan equalled one Chinese silver yanchaan, and two lans made one Russian paper note.
How the reform act built a currency
The Mongolian Trade and Industrial Bank had opened on 2 June 1924, and the act of 22 February 1925 made it the only issuer and fixed the note values from 1 to 100 tögrög. At least a quarter of the issue had to be backed by precious metal and the rest by goods that could be sold quickly.
Notes went out in December 1925 beside a silver coin of 18 grams at 900 fineness, pitched at the value of one Soviet ruble. Silver is heavy to move. Paper carried most of the load, and the state first released the notes through its payroll.
The Chinese yanchaan held on longest. Its rate against the tögrög started at 1 to 0.88 and reached par by the end of 1926, and from 1927 every Mongolian institution and enterprise kept its books in tögrög. The State Baga Khural then moved the currency onto a gold standard from 15 April 1928, after silver prices fell on world markets, and by 1 August that year one tögrög equalled 51.8 US cents.
How the notes changed script and face
The first notes were printed in the old Mongolian script. In 1939 the bank added the portrait of Sukhbaatar and replaced the 2 tögrög note with a 3. Cyrillic crept onto the notes in 1941 and took over entirely in 1955, when the notes also grew larger. In 1966 they shrank again, under a wholly new design. Through the socialist years they looked much like the Soviet ruble and were printed in the Soviet Union.
The series of 1993 gives each value its own colour and size, on paper made of pure cotton. Chinggis Khaan appears on the 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000, while Sukhbaatar keeps the 10 to the 100.
Where the möngö and the coins went
The tögrög was once split into 100 möngö. The Soviet Union struck the coins of 1925, 1937 and 1945. The 1925 möngö coins of 10 to 50 were silver. China made the aluminium coins of 1959, which had a hole in the middle. Mongolia has minted its own since 1970.
After the Mongolian People's Republic ended in 1992, inflation surged and the möngö coins dropped out of use in favour of larger tögrög values. The central bank issued coins of 20, 50, 100 and 200 tögrög in 1996, and a 500 tögrög coin with Sukhbaatar's portrait followed in 2001. Möngö now sell as collectibles.
Common questions
Questions about the Mongolian tugrik
What does the word tögrög mean?
It means a circle or a circular object, and so a coin. Outside the currency the word survives mostly in the phrase tögrög sar, the full moon. The first tögrög of 1925 was itself a round silver coin of 18 grams.
When did Mongolia get its own currency?
After the revolution of 1921. Until then Mongolians traded in Russian and Chinese notes and in foreign coins, and in livestock. A temporary unit, the lan, came in August 1921. The reform act of 22 February 1925 created the tögrög and gave the Mongolian Trade and Industrial Bank the sole right to issue it, and the first notes and silver coins went out that December. The Chinese yanchaan kept circulating for another two years, until from 1927 every institution kept its books in tögrög.
Are möngö coins still used in Mongolia?
No. The tögrög was divided into 100 möngö, but the möngö coins fell out of use after 1992, when inflation surged at the end of the Mongolian People's Republic and larger tögrög values replaced them. They are now sold online and to tourists as collectibles.
Who is pictured on Mongolian banknotes?
In the series of 1993 Chinggis Khaan appears on the 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 tögrög notes. Sukhbaatar, whose portrait first went onto the notes in 1939, is on the 10, 20, 50 and 100. The 1993 notes also carry the Soyombo emblem and national ornaments, alongside pictures of Mongolian scenery and historical events, and each value has its own colour and size. The paper is pure cotton, with a watermark, microlettering, intaglio printing and images that show only under ultraviolet light.