Economy

Imports
$14.3 billion (2021).   Refined Petroleum ($1.27B), Petroleum Gas ($400M), Broadcasting Equipment ($397M), Computers ($328M), and Cars ($285M), importing mostly from United States ($3.98B), China ($2.34B), Guatemala ($1.73B), Mexico ($1.1B), and Honduras ($670M).

Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of  age)
• 29% have an account with a financial institution
• 5.7% have a credit card
• 3.5% have a mobile money account
• 5.6% make online purchases

Ease of doing business
Easy to conduct business (rated 65.3 out of 100). 8^th out of 32 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, 91^st worldwide out of 190 countries (2023, World Bank)

Exports
$6.86 billion (2021).  Knit T-shirts ($752M), Knit Sweaters ($436M), Electrical Capacitors ($311M), Plastic Lids ($269M), and Raw Sugar ($236M), exporting mostly to United States ($2.67B), Guatemala ($1.16B), Honduras ($1.09B), Nicaragua ($492M), and Costa Rica ($280M).

Economic freedom
‘Mostly free’ (56 out of 100) 23rd amongst 32 countries in the Americas region 114th worldwide out of 186 countries (2022, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal)

Global Innovation Index

Ranked 14th out of 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries, 100th out of 132 worldwide.

The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.

Media

Media language
Spanish

Information channels
Press freedom is guaranteed under the constitution and there is a lively media scene, says Freedom House. But journalists who report on the activities of criminal gangs, or on corruption, face harassment and acts of violence. Five national TV networks are on the air and there are scores of radio stations in the capital alone. The broadcast media are privately owned and in the hands of a small group of business interests which exercise editorial influence. There were 3.1 million internet users by 2017, around 50% of the population (via Internetworldstats). Access is unrestricted.

The press

La Prensa Grafica – daily
El Mundo – evening daily
El Diario de Hoy – daily
El Diario Co Latino – daily
El Faro – digital weekly

Television

TCS (Canal 2) – private
Canal Cuatro (Canal 4) – private
Canal Seis (Canal 6) – private
Agape TV (Canal 8) – private
Canal 12 – private

Radio

YSKL La Poderosa – commercial
FM Globo – commercial
Femenina 102.5 – commercial

Internet Data

Internet users
71.7% penetration, 4.55 million

Share of web traffic by device
58.79% mobile phones, 39.70% computers (laptops and desktops), 1.44% tablet devices, others 0.08%

Median speed of mobile Internet connection
20.98 Mbps

Median speed of fixed Internet connection
31.30 Mbps

Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 156.5%

Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 81.6%

Most popular web search engines
Google (95.91%), Bing (3.31%), Petal Search (0.33%), Yahoo (0.25%), DuckduckGo (0.09%), Yandex (0.05%)

Most used social media
Facebook (72.17%), Instagram (11.2%), Pinterest (7.41%), Twitter (4.58%), YouTube (4.23%), Tumblr (0.18%)

Social statistics

Life expectancy
71 years (2020)

Current healthcare expenditure
9.85% of GDP (2019)

Current education expenditure
94.1% of total expenditure in public institutions

Co2 emissions
1.12 metric tons per capita

Gender
Unfortunately, women suffer from considerable inequality. They generally they earn less, have lower positions in organizations and face strong pressures to stay at home, even though things are changing. It is still a man’s society, but women are progressively improving their status. 

Sexual harassment can be a problem. Men are used to flirting with women. 

Ethnicity
Due to political and social problems, inherited by colonialism, native people were forgotten and our roots almost disappeared, however, the Mayan culture is still alive in some areas along Central America. The native dialect is “nahuat”, which just a few people know. There is no predominant race.

It is common to see wealthy businesswomen/men, but some of them treat their employees without respect. This is noticeable through a different kind of communication, their expressions when talking about poor people, differences in opportunities, and mainly in salary. This situation can be clearly observed in certain contexts such as the industrial, commercial, and agricultural sectors and you can find yourself involved in implementing some decisions, in the organization, which could affect low-income employees.

Problems or impacts in the workplace are generated mainly because of gender and class position, but not by religion or ethnicity issues.

Religion
The official religion is Roman Catholic, but there are other religions such as Baptist and other denominations. You will not find any strong barriers to establishing a relationship with someone of another religion.

Class
There are different social classes, with marked differences between them. Higher classes are located in the capital and in the rest of the country it is quite rare to find rich people. 35% of the population is considered very poor and another 30% as poor.

Corruption Perception Index
El Salvador scored 33 out of 100, ranked 116 out of 180 countries worldwide.

The CPI measures the perception of corruption due to the difficulty of measuring absolute levels of corruption.

World Happiness Index
Canada ranked 49 out of 137 countries, with a score of 6.120.

The World Happiness Index measures happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives, correlated with other life factors.