structural:summarization
Economy

The per capita income of the Republic is often listed as being approximately $400 a year, one of the lowest in the world, but this figure is based mostly on reported sales of exports and largely ignores the unregistered sale of foods, locally produced alcoholic beverages, diamonds, ivory, bushmeat, and traditional medicine.

The currency of the Central African Republic is the CFA franc, which is accepted across the former countries of French West Africa and trades at a fixed rate to the euro. Diamonds constitute the country's most important export, accounting for 40–55% of export revenues, but it is estimated that between 30% and 50% of those produced each year leave the country clandestinely. On 27 April 2022, Bitcoin (BTC) was adopted as an additional legal tender. Lawmakers unanimously adopted a bill that made Bitcoin legal tender alongside the CFA franc and legalized the use of cryptocurrencies. President Faustin-Archange Touadéra signed the measure into law, said his chief of staff Obed Namsio. After an extraordinary meeting on 6 May 2022, COBAC published DECISION D-071-2022 in which it banned the use of crypto currency. It subsequently repealed its status as legal tender.

Agriculture is dominated by the cultivation and sale of food crops such as cassava, peanuts, maize, sorghum, millet, sesame, and plantain. The annual growth rate of real GDP is slightly above 3%. The importance of food crops over exported cash crops is indicated by the fact that the total production of cassava, the staple food of most Central Africans, ranges between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes a year, while the production of cotton, the principal exported cash crop, ranges from 25,000 to 45,000 tonnes a year. Food crops are not exported in large quantities, but still constitute the principal cash crops of the country because Central Africans derive far more income from the periodic sale of surplus food crops than from exported cash crops such as cotton or coffee. Much of the country is self-sufficient in food crops; however, livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.

The Republic's primary import partner is France (17.1%). Other imports come from the United States (12.3%), India (11.5%), and China (8.2%). Its largest export partner is France (31.2%), followed by Burundi (16.2%), China (12.5%), Cameroon (9.6%), and Austria (7.8%).

The Central African Republic is a member of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA). In the 2009 World Bank Group 's report Doing Business, it was ranked 183rd out of 183 as regards 'ease of doing business', a composite index which takes into account regulations that 'enhance' business activity and those that restrict it.