African leaders launch landmark 55-nation trade zone

Re:African leaders launch landmark 55-nation trade zone by runarberg on Monday July 08, 2019 @01:33AM (#20380145)

According to wikipedia Guam has a GDP per capita of $30,500 and American Samoa has an even lower GDP per capita of $13,000 so 5:1 is closer to reality for the US.

That said. The US is not the only country to oficially use the US dollar. Among others, Ecuador has a GDP per capita of just under $12,000 and uses the US dollar, Palau $16,000, East Timor $5,500, and lowest are Marshall Islands and Micronesia both with GDP per capita under $4,000 bringing the ratio closer to 1:18.

Also there are plenty of counties with even lower GDP that uses the dollar unofficially, so I don’t see a problem with a high GDP per capita ratio.

Edit: Equatorial Guinea is also an outlier with high GDP and low population. We could arbitrarily decide to include San Francisco in the US example with a GDP per person of over $100,000 bringing the US ratio up to 1:7 and the US dollar ratio to 1:25

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:African leaders launch landmark 55-nation trade zone by guaka on Monday July 08, 2019 @04:23AM (#20380905)

It's not as if most people are rich in Equatorial Guinea. It's an appalling outlier in terms of inequality, even on such an unequal continent as Africa.

"Only about half of the country’s population has access to clean drinking water, overcrowded living condition is—surprisingly given the country’s low population density—rampant and very few children enjoy the advantages of urban life such as education, medical services and recreational facilities." https://borgenproject.org/equatorial-guinea-poverty/

I tried to find data about GINI for the country but the World Bank and the UN don't have anything. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/income-gini-coefficient

[ Parent | on HN ]