List of South American Countries By GDP (nominal)

List Of South American Countries By GDP (nominal)

This article includes for each section three lists of countries of South America sorted by their gross domestic product (GDP) and by their gross domestic product per capita.

The figures presented here do not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference to the standard of living of its population. Therefore these figures should be used with caution.

Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. (See List of countries by GDP (PPP) and List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.) PPP largely removes the exchange rate problem, but has its own drawbacks; it does not reflect the value of economic output in international trade, and it also requires more estimation than GDP per capita. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are more narrowly spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.

Great care should be taken when using either set of figures to compare the wealth of two countries. Often people who wish to promote or denigrate a country will use the figure that suits their case best and ignore the other one, which may be substantially different, but a valid comparison of two economies should take both rankings into account, as well as utilising other economic data to put an economy in context.

These lists includes countries and territories which are commonly included in South America. Sometimes Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago may also be included in South America. The precise listing of South American countries may vary. GDP of South America was 5.6% of the world GDP in 2010.

Non-sovereign entities which are not considered to be countries (world, the South America totals, regional trade blocs and a dependent territory) are included in the list because they appear in the sources or gives useful and relevant comparative information between trade blocs and countries of the region. These economies are not ranked in the charts here, but are listed in sequence by GDP for comparison. The country aggregates are marked in bold and italics and the dependent territories are marked in italics.

• The first list includes 2010 data estimates for members of the International Monetary Fund.

• The second list includes data (mostly) for the year 2010 from the World Bank.

• The third list includes data from The World Factbook, provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Data between countries are not always comparable as it may refer to different years. Figures are mostly estimates for 2010.