Economy of Somalia
Somalia is classified by the United Nations as a least developed country. Despite experiencing two decades of civil war, the country has maintained an informal economy, based mainly on livestock, remittance/money transfers from abroad, and telecommunications. Due to a dearth of formal government statistics and the recent civil war, it is difficult to gauge the size or growth of the economy. For 1994, the CIA estimated the GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) to be $3.3 billion. In 2001, it was estimated to be $4.1 billion. By 2009, the CIA estimated that the PPP GDP had grown to $5.731 billion, with a projected real growth rate of 2.6%. In 2014, the International Monetary Fund estimated economic activity to have expanded by 3.7 percent primarily driven by growth in the primary sector and secondary sector. According to a 2007 British Chambers of Commerce report, the private sector has experienced growth, particularly in the service sector. Unlike the pre-civil war period when most services and the industrial sector were government-run, there has been substantial, albeit unmeasured, private investment in commercial activities; this has been largely financed by the Somali diaspora, and includes trade and marketing, money transfer services, transportation, communications, fishery equipment, airlines, telecommunications, education, health, construction and hotels.