page_title: French Guiana
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: French Guiana / Economy
caption_attribution_description: Raumfrachter ATV-4 "Albert Einstein" Ariane 5ES mit "OCAM"-Kamerasystem Gemeinsam mit Partnern hat das DLR in den vergangenen Jahren das On-Board-Kamerasystem "OCAM" entwickeln lassen, mit dem sich der Flug der Ariane-Rakete verfolgen lässt. Das OCAM-System ist eine eigenständige Komponente, die auf der Ariane 5 als Passagier mitfliegt. Der Höhepunkt des OCAM-Einsatzes wird die Beobachtung des Absetzens von ATV-4 im Orbit sein. Für dieses Ereignis wird OCAM dreidimensionale Video-Sequenzen aufnehmen, um das dynamische Verhalten der Raumfahrzeuge während der Separationsphase zu studieren. Damit eröffnet sich für die Ingenieure des ATV-Projekts eine völlig neue Möglichkeit, den Erfolg ihrer Arbeit zu beobachten und zugleich für die Zukunft wichtige neue Erfahrungen zu sammeln. www.dlr.de/blogs/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-7023/11643_rea... Credit: DLR/Thilo Kranz (CC-BY 3.0) 2013
context_page_description: French Guiana is an overseas department and region of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas. It borders Brazil to the east and south and Suriname to the west. French Guiana is the only territory of the mainland Americas to have full integration in a European country.
  With a land area of 83,534 km², French Guiana is the second-largest region of France and the largest outermost region within the European Union. It has a very low population density, with only 3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre. Half of its 290,691 inhabitants in 2020 lived in the metropolitan area of Cayenne, its capital. 98.9% of the land territory of French Guiana is covered by forests, a large part of which is primeval rainforest. The Guiana Amazonian Park, which is the largest national park in the European Union, covers 41% of French Guiana's territory.
  Since December 2015 both the region and the department have been ruled by a single assembly within the framework of a new territorial collectivity, the French Guiana Territorial Collectivity. This assembly, the French Guiana Assembly, has replaced the former regional council and departmental council, which were both disbanded.
context_section_description: As a part of France, French Guiana is part of the European Union and the Eurozone; its currency is the euro. The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for French Guiana is .gf, but .fr is generally used instead.
  In 2017, the GDP of French Guiana at market exchange rates was US$5.18 billion (€4.59 billion), ranking as the largest economy in the Guianas, and the 11th largest in South America.
  French Guiana is heavily dependent on mainland France for subsidies, trade, and goods. The main traditional industries are fishing (accounting for 5% of exports in 2012), gold mining (accounting for 32% of exports in 2012) and timber (accounting for 1% of exports in 2012). In addition, the Guiana Space Centre has played a significant role in the local economy since it was established in Kourou in 1964: it accounted directly and indirectly for 16% of French Guiana's GDP in 2002 (down from 26% in 1994, as the French Guianese economy is becoming increasingly diversified). The Guiana Space Centre employed 1,659 people in 2012.
  There is very little manufacturing. Agriculture is largely undeveloped and is mainly confined to the area near the coast and along the Maroni River. Sugar and bananas were traditionally two of the main cash crops grown for export but have almost completely disappeared. Today they have been replaced by livestock raising (essentially beef cattle and pigs) in the coastal savannas between Cayenne and the second-largest town, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and market gardening (fruits and vegetables) developed by the Hmong communities settled in French Guiana in the 1970s, both destined to the local market. A thriving rice production, developed on polders near Mana from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, has almost completely disappeared since 2011 due to marine erosion and new EU plant health rules which forbid the use of many pesticides and fertilizers. Tourism, especially eco-tourism, is growing. Unemployment has been persistently high in the last few decades: 20% to 25% (22.3% in 2012).
  In 2017, the GDP per capita of French Guiana at market exchange rates, not at PPP, was US$18,313 (€16,218), the highest in South America, but only 46.7% of metropolitan France's average GDP per capita that year, and 55.5% of the metropolitan French regions outside the Paris Region. Social unrest in 2017 paralyzed the economy for several weeks and led to an economic recession (−1.9% in real terms), which sunk the GDP per capita that year.
caption: An Ariane 5 rocket being processed at the Guiana Space Centre; the launch site is estimated to account for as much as 16% of French Guiana's GDP
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