Overview: The agricultural sector accounts for about 12% of GDP and provides employment for about 80% of the labor force. About 40% of the total cultivated land is used to grow peanuts, an important export crop. Another principal economic resource is fishing, which brought in about 23% of total foreign exchange earnings in 1990. Mining is dominated by the extraction of phosphate, but production has faltered because of reduced worldwide demand for fertilizers in recent years. Over the past 10 years tourism has become increasingly important to the economy.
National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $5.4 billion (1991 est.)
National product real growth rate: 1.2% (1991 est.)
National product per capita: $780 (1991 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 2% (1990)
Unemployment rate: NA%
Budget: revenues $921 million; expenditures $1,024 million; including capital expenditures of $14 million (FY89 est.)
External debt: $2.9 billion (1990)
Industrial production: growth rate 4.7% (1989); accounts for 15% of GDP
Electricity: 215,000 kW capacity; 760 million kWh produced, 100 kWh per capita (1991)
Industries: agricultural and fish processing, phosphate mining, petroleum refining, building materials
Agriculture: major products - peanuts (cash crop), millet, corn, sorghum, rice, cotton, tomatoes, green vegetables; estimated two-thirds self-sufficient in food; fish catch of 354,000 metric tons in 1990
Illicit drugs: increasingly active as a transshipment point for Southwest Asian heroin moving to Europe and North America
Economic aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $551 million; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-89), $5.23 billion; OPEC bilateral aid (1979-89), $589 million; Communist countries (1970-89), $295 million
Currency: 1 CFA franc (CFAF)=100 centimes
Exchange rates: Communaute Financiere Africaine francs (CFAF) per US$1 - 274.06 (January 1993), 264.69 (1992), 282.11 (1991), 272.26 (1990), 319.01 (1989), 297.85 (1988)
Fiscal year: 1 July-30 June; in January 1993, Senegal will switch to a calendar year