Resources
Gabon depended on timber and manganese until oil was discovered offshore in the early 1970s. The oil sector now accounts for 50% of GDP and 80% of exports. Oil production is now declining from its peak of 370,000 barrels per day (59,000 m3/d) in 1997. The 1998 fall-off in oil prices had a negative impact on government revenues and the economy. Gabon public expenditures from the years of significant oil revenues have not been spent well.
The government has recently announced it will reassess exactly how much iron ore the Belinga site contains before awarding the concession to a mining company, most likely to be China’s CMEC, who temporarily secured the rights to the ore in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Gabon
Famous quotes containing the word resources:
“How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“Your children don’t have equal talents now and they won’t have equal opportunities later in life. You may be able to divide resources equally in childhood, but your best efforts won’t succeed in shielding them from personal or physical crises. . . . Your heart will be broken a thousand times if you really expect to equalize your children’s happiness by striving to love them equally.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?—as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)