Americas

Commonwealth Countries of the Americas: Few Facts

There are 3 Commonwealth Countries in the American region. All of them have been members of the WTO since 1995.

On the HDI scale developed by the UNDP, Canada ranks among the high level countries while Belize and Guyana have secured places among the medium level countries.

Trade to GDP ratio that points towards the openness of the countries to trade (export as well as import) has Guyana at the highest with 195.5% while Canada is at 72.9%. Average trade to GDP ratio is 128.1% with coefficient of variance of 48.56%.

GDP growth rates of the countries of the region vary from 2.7% (Canada) to 4.5% (Guyana). Contribution to the economy is about 22-23% from agriculture in Canada and Belize and about 36% in Guyana. Service sector contributes more than 60% to GDP in Canada (68%) and Belize (62%, basically due to tourism) and about 45% in Guyana.

In terms of exports, while Canada’s export basket includes vehicles and aircrafts, machinery and telecommunication equipments, chemicals, fertilizers, fuel, electricity, wood and its products, export products from Belize and Guyana are similar and consists of sugar, molasses, fruits, fish and shrimps, wood and its products. Guyana also exports minerals and metals like gold, bauxite and aluminum while Belize also exports clothings.

Imports of all the countries have common items like machinery and equipments, fuel, chemicals, manufactures and consumer goods.

Canada holds high share in world total merchandise exports at 3.43% and world total services exports at 2.13%. Belize and Guyana have almost negligible share of 0.00-0.01 in world merchandise exports and about 0.01 in world services exports.

Table 1: WTO, Trade-GDP Ratio and HDI Status of the American Commonwealth Members

^{* The ratio is taken for the period from 2003-05.}