Report prepared by Elliot Knudson and Courtenay White, students in BCIT’s Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program.

Geography

Ecuador is located in western South America, bordering the Pacific Ocean at the Equator, between Colombia and Peru. The capital city is Quito, which was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1978.

People

In July 2006, Ecuador’s population was estimated to be 13,547,510. Approximately forty-eight percent of the population lives on the coast, and about forty-six percent in the highlands. The remaining percentage lives in the Oriente.

Ecuador’s ethnic mix is as follows:

• mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) sixty-five percent
• Amerindian twenty-five percent
• Spanish and others seven percent
• black three percent

Economy

Ecuador has substantial petroleum resources, which have been the source of forty percent of the country's export earnings and one-third of the central government budget revenues in recent years. Consequently, fluctuations in world market prices can have a substantial domestic impact. In the late 1990s, Ecuador suffered its worst economic crisis, with natural disasters and sharp declines in world petroleum prices driving Ecuador's economy into free fall. It was this crisis that led the Ecuadorian government to adopt the U.S. dollar as the national currency.

Exports: $9.224 billion (2005 est.)
Commodities: Petroleum, bananas, cut flowers, shrimp
Exports: US 51.1%, Peru 8%, Germany 4.4%, Colombia 4.3% (2005)
Imports: $8.436 billion (2005 est.)
Imports: Vehicles, medicinal products, telecommunications equipment, electricity
Imports: US 22.3%, Colombia 14.9%, Venezuela 7.8%, Brazil 6%, China 5.3% (2005)