socioeconomics

Overall, Colombia has a pretty good economy that can support their needs sufficiently. For example the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is $711.6 billion dollars as of 2017. In addition, the GDP per capita, the GDP per person is $14,400. And these numbers are continuing to go up because the GDP growth rate is 1.8%, showing that it is increasing year by year. However that is only for some people, because about 20% of Colombia’s population is living below the poverty line. The lowest 10% of Colombia’s population - with the least money - are responsible for 1.1% of income and consumption for each household. Whereas the highest 10% - with the most money - are responsible for 42.2%! Although the GDP numbers are increasing, the inflation rates are also increasing as 4.3% in 2017. Due to rising expenses, many Colombians are working a variety of jobs. In 2017, 25.6 million people worked in the labor force. This is a crazy number because in 2017, the total population of Colombia was just 48.35 million people! However if the people that don’t work in the labor force, 9.3% of people in Colombia are unemployed. But the main distributions of the labor force are agriculture, industry, and services. As of 2011, 17% of people worked in agriculture, 21% in industry, and 62% in services. As of 2017, 21% of Colombians worked in industry, and the main industries are textiles, food processing, oil clothing and footwear, beverages, chemicals, cement, gold, coal, and emeralds. Additionally, the industry production growth rate is -2.2% meaning that the number of people that work in industry and the amount of industry products that are made are shrinking. Colombia also uses many different resources like electricity, oil, refined petroleum, and natural gas. They produce 74.92 billion kilowatts of electricity, and consume 68.25 billion kilowatts of electricity, both as of 2016. They also export 460 million kilowatts - as of 2015, and import 378 million kilowatts - as of 2016. It is similar for petroleum, oil, and natural gas. For example, Colombia consumes 333,000 bbl/day, as of 2016. Colombia also produces 863,000 bbl/day of oil, and exports 726,700 bbl/day of oil. They import 0 bbl/day, and the proved reserves are 1.665 billion bbl/day as of January 1st, 2018. And for the natural gasses, they produce 10.02 billion CU M, consume 10.08 billion CU M, export 0 CU M, import 48.14 million CU M, and the proved reserves are 113.9 billion CU M as of 2018. And as for agriculture, the main products are coffee, cut flowers, bananas, rice, tobacco, corn, sugarcane, cocoa beans, oilseed, vegetables, shrimp, and forest products. Similarly, Colombia made $39.48 billion off of their exports in 2017. These exports are petroleum, coal, emeralds, coffee, nickel, cut flowers, bananas, and apparel items. To produce these exports, Colombia has partnered with the United States for 28.5%, Panama for 8.6%, and China for 5.1%. They also spend $44.24 billion off of imports such as industrial equipment, transportation equipment, consumer goods, chemicals, paper products, fuels, and different kinds of electricity. To bring these in, they, as of 2017, were partnered with the United States for 26.3%, China for 19.3%, Mexico for 7.5%, Brazil for 5%, and Germany for 4.1%. Despite making lots of money from their exports and industries, Colombia’s external debt was $124.6 billion in 2017, and they received $511.1 million in financial aid in 2005 as well. Staying on the topic of money, the Colombian peso is the national currency and the exchange rate to an American dollar is that 1 peso is .00025 of a US dollar. As proven by these facts, Colombia has a great and pretty healthy economy throughout the country. It is similar to lots on other countries, in the sense that they make a lot of money, but also spend a lot of money as well.