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French Guiana / Guyane Française - Economy

The Guyanese economy is driven by space activities, good public order and private investment. Agricultural production (vegetables, sugar cane, fruits, rice) remains difficult due to the vegetation and the size of Guyanese space.

One of the main burdens for the people of Guiana is the high cost of living. The reliance on imports from Europe means food prices are particularly onerous. In one of the great paradoxes of life in the French enclave, cheaper products from neighboring Brazil and Suriname are subjected to the crippling tariffs applied across the European Union, and thus largely inaccessible.

The economy in Guyana is mainly tertiary and aerospace activity contributes greatly to exports. The excellence of the Guyanese space center led foreign companies to launch satellites there. In addition to Ariane rockets of French origin, Italian Vega rockets and Russian Soyuz can be fired from the CSG.

By 2015, 64,000 Guyanese were employed and 18,000 were unemployed as defined by the ILO. The tertiary sector concentrates a very large share of jobs (76.6%) and more than eight out of ten active employees are salaried. In Guyana, unemployment accounts for 22% of assets on average in 2015, as in 2014. This is more than in Martinique but less than in Guadeloupe. The unemployment rate for women is higher than for men, but the gap is decreasing in 2015.

In 2015, 15.2% of people in Guyana were not employed, proportion down from 2014. The non-salariat affects more men than of women. Employees therefore represent 84.8% of assets occupied in Guyana. About ten people in employment, two are nonsalaries. two are workers, three are employed and occupy three a middle management or a frame job. The share of intermediate and senior occupations rose by 2 points to 2015, at 32.4% busy assets, while the share workers remains stable between 2014 and 2015. In 2015, the men are more numerous among workers, as in 2014, even if the gap is narrowing between the two dates. Women are also than men among the professions intermediaries, but they are a minority within the frameworks as in 2014. In skilled workers jobs and employees, or more than 30% of the jobs, men are majority (2 men to 1 woman), contrary to the jobs of workers and unskilled employees.

The most common form of employment contract is the contract term indeterminate (permanent). In 2015, 80.1% of employees benefits, 18.6% are in fixed-term contracts (CDD), 0.9% in interim and 0.4% in learning. Women hold almost three jobs in CSD on five, but they are two times less numerous than men among the temporary workers and apprentices.

An apprentice on two and 18% of temporary workers or beneficiaries of a CSD have less than 25 years, compared to slightly less than 4% of the permanent employees. In 2015,. 14.9% of persons in employment work part-time, either 3.6 percentage points less than in 2014. 6,000 people are in a situation of underemployment, or 9.5% of occupied assets, less in 2014. The underemployment effects mainly women, who occupy nearly 3 jobs to part time on 5, the young, the unskilled and the workers (qualified or not).

French Guiana’s mineral resources included, in order of value, gold, petroleum, kaolin, niobium, tantalum, and clay. As of November 4, 2009 (the latest date for which information was available), the French authorities had not yet announced a new mining framework for French Guiana but had published a working document as a first step. In February 2009, the French Government declared a moratorium on all mining and exploration activities in French Guiana until a new “mining framework” was completed and assessed. This announcement suspended the granting of mining licenses pending the outcome of environmental reviews of exploration on all French Guiana concessions.

French Guiana is located on one of the oldest and richest deposits of minerals in the world, a Precambrian geological formation, namely the Guiana Shield. This shield underlies French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana and some parts of Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. The mineral wealth of its subsoil has resulted in legal, but also illegal gold mining activities. Although this activity has always been part of the French Guianan economy, this sector is currently increasing in proportion to the value of gold. Two thirds of the exported gold is illegal and around 7,000 people (90% of whom are illegal migrants) are involved in this activity. The situation is similar throughout the Guiana Shield, with more than 20,000 Brazilian and Maroon people working in the gold mining sector in Suriname and around the same number of people in Guyana.

The leading mineral commodities produced in French Guiana in 2010 were cement, clays, crushed stone, gold, niobium and tantalum, and sand. In recent years, the mineral industry of French Guiana had been focused on gold and petroleum exploration.

In South America, Tullow Oil plc of the United Kingdom had interests in the prospective Guyana Basin, which includes French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname. According to Tullow, the Guyana Basin offers significant frontier exploration opportunities, including geologic structures that are similar to those of the Jubilee field of Ghana across the Atlantic Ocean.