The Republic of Suriname is a country on the northeast shoulder of South-America. Due to its relative anonymity Suriname has many undiscovered business opportunities. Natural Resources The natural resources are oil, timber, hydropower, fish, kaolin, shrimp, bauxite, gold, diamond, nickel, copper, platinum, iron ore. • The backbone of Suriname's economy is the export of alumina. Currently, Alcoa and BHP Billiton are investing US$2bn in the bauxite industry in West-Suriname. The nation's topography is part of the geographical formation known as the Guyana Shield, a mineral-dense layer of the earth's crust estimated to be two billion years

old, and a contributing factor to oil, gold and other minerals being discovered in Suriname. • In the oil sector, the state-owned oil company Staatsolie, entered into off-shore exploration agreements with Repsol YPF, Maersk and Occidental Petrol. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) ranks the Suriname’s offshore basin as second among the world’s unexplored oil basins with a potential unexplored 15billion barrels.