Mauritania Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Mauritania

Mauritania’s economy grew an estimated 4.2% in 2025 (down from 6.3% in 2024), as declining fishing, iron-ore and services output offset the initial boost from gas production; growth is projected to rebound to 4.4% in 2026 and 4.5% in 2027 as gas output ramps toward full capacity (World Bank, Macro Poverty Outlook, April 2026). GDP stood at $11.7 billion in 2025 with GDP per capita of $2,206; other trackers show a lower per-capita figure of roughly $1,713–2,083 depending on the reference year, so figures should be cited with their exact source/year. Inflation averaged 1.5% in 2025 but spiked to 4.0% year-on-year in December 2025 on food-price pressures linked to disrupted Senegal–Mali trade routes. The national currency is the Mauritanian ouguiya (MRU), which stayed broadly stable against the US dollar in 2025. Mauritania’s economy remains structurally anchored in a small number of commodities: iron ore mining via the state-controlled Société Nationale Industrielle et Minière (SNIM), one of the world’s largest iron ore producers; Atlantic fishing; and, since late 2024/2025, offshore natural gas from the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) project — the World Bank’s own April 2026 report explicitly names “fish, iron ore, gold, and gas since 2025” as the concentrated commodity base driving growth, while noting this capital-intensive model has produced weak job creation.

SNIM produced roughly 14.3 million tonnes of iron ore in 2024, a record, generating about $1.25 billion in export revenue, and Mauritania ranked the world’s 16th-largest iron-ore producer by iron content; SNIM is targeting a capacity expansion to 24 million tonnes by 2031 via a planned $467 million investment. The GTA offshore gas project — a $4.8 billion development operated by bp with Kosmos Energy, Senegal’s Petrosen and Mauritania’s SMH — achieved first gas on December 31, 2024, first LNG in February 2025, and its first LNG cargo export in April 2025; Phase 1 targets roughly 2.3 million tonnes of LNG per annum. The World Bank’s April 2026 MPO notes GTA gas exports, alongside elevated gold prices, narrowed Mauritania’s current account deficit to 5.8% of GDP in 2025 (from 9.5% in 2024). FDI inflows to Mauritania reached $873 million in 2023, with cumulative FDI stock estimated at $6.7 billion (63.6% of GDP) as of end-2023. On trade, China and Canada were Mauritania’s top export destinations in 2023 (22.7% and 24.4% of exports respectively), with iron ore (~44% of exports) and fish products the dominant export categories. The EU–Mauritania Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement allows EU vessels to catch up to 287,050 tonnes annually in exchange for an EU financial contribution exceeding €59.1 million per year; the current protocol expires in November 2026. Mauritania also maintains a fisheries-investment arrangement with China dating to a 2010 agreement, tied to a Nouadhibou fish-processing plant; exports of meat/fish/seafood preparations to China reached $1.05 billion in 2024.

Mauritania’s population was estimated at approximately 5.3 million in 2025. The modeled ILO unemployment rate was estimated at 10.37% in 2024. Using the World Bank’s lower-middle-income poverty line ($4.20/day, 2021 PPP), poverty fell from 27.0% in 2024 to 25.2% in 2025, while the stricter international poverty rate ($3.00/day) stood at 10.0% in 2025. President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was re-elected to a second and final term on June 29, 2024 with 56.12% of the vote against anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid (22.1%), on turnout of about 55%. Separately, Mauritania’s Supreme Court in November 2025 upheld a 15-year prison sentence and $3 million fine against former president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (president 2009–2019) for illicit enrichment and corruption, closing his final appeal. Mauritania hosts a very large and growing population of Malian refugees: UNHCR’s February 2026 country factsheet records over 300,000 refugees and asylum-seekers overall, with roughly 290,000 Malians concentrated in the Hodh Chargui region — about 120,000 in the Mbera camp (originally built for 70,000) and roughly 170,000 more dispersed across 70+ host villages; UNHCR recorded around 50,000 new Malian arrivals during 2025 alone. On the historical/ongoing issue of slavery: Mauritania abolished slavery by decree in 1981 (the last country in the world to do so), criminalized it with prison sentences in 2007, and in 2015 passed a law declaring slavery a crime against humanity, raising penalties to 10–20 years; independent monitors including Anti-Slavery International report that despite this legal framework, descent-based slavery persists in parts of the country and enforcement remains limited relative to the scale of the problem. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current exposure to Mauritania’s commodity-dependent fiscal conditions directly.