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From Weapons to Diamonds This Map Shows Every Country's Favourite Import

| Courtesy of Vouchercloud

Whether it’s weapons, petrol, diamonds or food, this map shows you nearly every country’s biggest import. Some may surprise you!

It’s fair to say that fuel and transportation dominate worldwide imports, with 87 of 187 countries importing more refined or unrefined petroleum than anything else.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

With all that fuel, it figures that cars, passenger ships, planes, helicopters and even spacecraft are also among the most imported goods.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

Food and medicines are among the biggest imports for many of the world’s poorest, most remote and war torn countries. Raw sugar, wheat and vegetables are heavily imported in Somalia, South Sudan and Syria. Scarily, the Central African Republic imports more weapons than anything else.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

Europeans also love their cars and fuel, but bankers’ haven Switzerland breaks the mould, with gold making up more than a quarter (27.7%) of total imports.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

Eastern Europe and Asia then switches the focus back to fuels, along with more remote and smaller island nations around the world, which understandably needing to import fuel more than anything else.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

More of the same in Southeast Asia, except for Bhutan which mostly imports ‘light rubberised knitted fabrics’ and countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines are importing integrated circuits like there’s no tomorrow, fuelling their consumer technology industries.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

In North America, they need an awful lot of cars to cover all those roads, so it’s not surprising they dominate imports.

Courtesy of Vouchercloud

The guys at Voucher Cloud have compiled a complete breakdown in case you were wondering.
Import Category
Number of Countries
Fuel
97
Transportation
54
Food and Produce
12
Metal, mineral and organic
10
Electronics
6
Medical
4
Textiles
3
Weapons
1
You might also be interested in: These Maps Show the Happiest Countries in the World

About the author

Alex Jordan is a travel writer based in London.

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