Approval for $425m in funds from the IMF, tied to about $3bn in financing from other international lenders, had been expected following the organisation’s annual meeting in Washington in April. However it was delayed by a Mongolian clause that directed sales proceeds from major foreign-invested products pass through a Mongolian bank account.

Expectations of IMF support have already allowed resource-rich but heavily indebted Mongolia to issue international bonds at somewhat lower interest rates, after years of loose domestic fiscal policy designed to ride out a four-year slump in the prices of copper and coal, its main exports.

“Mongolia was hit hard by the sharp decline of commodity prices and the slowdown in key export markets. Efforts to mitigate these shocks through expansionary policies were unsuccessful and resulted in unsustainable public debt, falling international reserves, and lower growth,” wrote Mitsuhiro Furusawa, deputy managing director and acting chair of the IMF.

He hailed Mongolia’s fiscal tightening measures, proposed efforts to strengthen the independence of the central bank and “commitment to a market-determined exchange rate.”

The tugrik, Mongolia’s currency, went into freefall last summer, triggered in part by the state’s sudden and unexpected purchase of Russia’s share in Erdenet, the country’s most historically important copper mine. It is now at about 2,400 to the U.S. dollar, after a long period in which the central bank spent reserves to keep it at the psychologically important level of less than 2,000 to the U.S. dollar.

The currency is now less than half its value in 2008, during the run-up in the commodity super-cycle. Meanwhile, Mongolia’s consistently high interest rates are exacerbating the population’s struggle to pay back personal and small business loans.