According to the section on Gabon, gross domestic product grew by 2.9 percent in 2024. Crude gained 1.9 percent once OPEC+ quotas were loosened and new fields started up; manganese returned to form after the 2023 rail stoppages, and Chinese and European buyers pulled timber along. The current account surplus is estimated at 30.7 percent of GDP.
The collection gains expected from the Digitax filing platform and from computerising customs posts in the north of the country were wiped out by a 4 percent drop in oil revenue. Against that, public spending jumped 24 percent: large works, the return of fuel subsidies for industry and the constitutional referendum. The public accounts swung around: a surplus of 1.8 percent of GDP in 2023 became an estimated deficit of 3.7 percent a year later, with public debt at 72.5 percent of GDP.
Inflation stood at 0.9 percent month on month in December 2024; BEAC kept its policy rate at 5 percent from March 2023 to March 2025 before cutting it to 4.5 percent. Unemployment remains high at 20.1 percent, and about 34.6 percent of the population lived on less than US$6.85 a day in 2024, close to 880,000 people. The World Bank then projected growth of about 2.4 percent over 2025 to 2027 and an average fiscal deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP.
