THE ECONOMY

The Guyana economy is traditionally dependent on a narrow range of products for its exports, employment and gross domestic product. Four products: bauxite, gold, sugar (the picture on this page shows a section of a sugar cane field in Berbice at sunset) and rice, are its principal foreign exchange earners. But the country is well endowed with natural resources, including a wide range of minerals, vast stretches of tropical hardwood forests, extensive areas of fertile agricultural lands, and numerous rivers and waterfalls with considerable hydro-electric potential.Gold production has surged with the opening of the Omai Gold Mine, the largest open-pit gold mine in South America, and ply-wood production for export by the Korean-Malaysian company, Barama, is growing rapidly.