Planning in communist-run Mongolia had an inauspicious start with the Five-Year Plan for 1931-35, which set unrealistically high targets for production and called for the collectivization of agricultural production. This plan was abandoned in 1932 in the face of widespread resistance to collectivization and theÍÍÍÍ failure to meet production goals. Annual planning was introduced in 1941 in an effort to deal with wartime shortages. Five-year plans were reintroduced in 1948 with the First Plan. The Second Five-Year Plan (1953-57) was followed by the Three-Year Plan (1958-60). Regular five-year plans were resumed with the Third Five-Year Plan (1961-65), and they have continued to be used since then.

In the late 1980s, economic planning in Mongolia included long-term, five-year, and annual plans that operated on multiple levels. Planning originated with the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, which produced the guidelines for economic and social development for the five-year period corresponding to the party's congress. Based on these guidelines, the Standing Commission on Economic-Budget Affairs of the People's Great Hural drafted the five-year national and annual economic plans, which were approved by the People's Great Hural and became law. The Council of Ministers directed and implemented national planning through the State Planning and Economic Committee and through the Ministry of Finance. Planning for different sectors of the economy was conducted by relevant ministries and state committees local plans were drawn up by local governmental organizations.

Mongolia's five-year plans have been coordinated with those of the Soviet Union since 1961 and with Comecon multilateral five-year plans since 1976. Annual plan coordination with the Soviet Union, which is made official in signed protocols, began in 1971. Mongolian planners were trained by Soviet planners and cooperated with them in drafting long-term plans, such as the General Scheme for the Development and Location of the Mongolian People's Republic Productive Forces up to 1990, produced in the late 1970s and the Longterm Program for the Development of Economic, Scientific, and Technical Cooperation Between the Mongolian People' Republic and the USSR for the Period up to 2000, signed in 1985.

National economic plans included general development goals as well as specific targets and quotas for agriculture, capital construction and investment, domestic and foreign trade, industry, labor resources and wages, retail sales and services, telecommunications, and transportation. The plans also focused on such social development goals and targets as improved living standards, population increase, cultural development, and scientific and technical development.

Data as of June 1989