structural:reformatting
Economy

As a part of France, French Guiana is part of the European Union and the Eurozone; its currency is the euro. The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for French Guiana is.gf, but.fr is generally used instead.

In 2019, the GDP of French Guiana at market exchange rates was US$4.93 billion (€4.41 billion), ranking as the 2nd largest economy in the Guianas after Guyana (which discovered large oil fields in 2015 and 2018), and the 12th largest in South America.

From the 1960s to the 2000s, French Guiana experienced strong economic growth, fueled by the development of France's Guiana Space Centre (established in French Guiana in 1964 as the independence of Algeria in 1962 led to the closure of France's space center in the Algerian Sahara) and by high population growth which stimulated domestic consumption. French Guiana's economy did not suffer from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008: the GDP grew by an average of +3.4% per year in real terms from 2002 to 2012, slightly faster than the rapidly growing population, which allowed French Guiana to catch up marginally with the rest of France in terms of standards of living. The GDP per capita rose from 48.0% of metropolitan France 's level in 2000 to 48.5% of metropolitan France in 2012.

Since 2013, however, French Guiana's economic growth has been uneven, and more subdued. From 2013 to 2019, the economy grew by an average of only +1.2% per year in real terms. French Guiana experienced a recession of -0.8% in 2014, and social unrest in 2017 led to almost no economic growth that year. Economic growth recovered at +3.0% in 2018, but was again almost null (+0.2%) in 2019. As a result, the GDP per capita has remained stagnant in nominal terms since 2013, and has declined relative to metropolitan France's. In 2019, the GDP per capita of French Guiana at market exchange rates, not at PPP, was US$17,375 (€15,521), only 42.3% of metropolitan France 's average GDP per capita that year, and 50.3% of the metropolitan French regions outside the Paris Region.

French Guiana was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, leading to a recession of -2.7% that year according to provisional estimates, moderate compared to the COVID-19 recession in metropolitan France (-7.9% in 2020).

French Guiana is heavily dependent on mainland France for subsidies, trade, and goods. The main traditional industries are fishing (accounting for 5% of exports in 2012), gold mining (accounting for 32% of exports in 2012) and timber (accounting for 1% of exports in 2012). In addition, the Guiana Space Centre has played a significant role in the local economy since it was established in Kourou in 1964: it accounted directly and indirectly for 16% of French Guiana's GDP in 2002 (down from 26% in 1994, as the French Guianese economy is becoming increasingly diversified). The Guiana Space Centre employed 1,659 people in 2012.

There is very little manufacturing. Agriculture is largely undeveloped and is mainly confined to the area near the coast and along the Maroni River. Sugar and bananas were traditionally two of the main cash crops grown for export but have almost completely disappeared. Today they have been replaced by livestock raising (essentially beef cattle and pigs) in the coastal savannas between Cayenne and the second-largest town, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and market gardening (fruits and vegetables) developed by the Hmong communities settled in French Guiana in the 1970s, both destined to the local market. A thriving rice production, developed on polders near Mana from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, has almost completely disappeared since 2011 due to marine erosion and new EU plant health rules which forbid the use of many pesticides and fertilizers. Tourism, especially eco-tourism, is growing.

Unemployment has been persistently high in the last few decades, standing between 17% and 24%. In recent years, the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 23.0% in 2016 to 19.3% in 2019.