01Key Takeaways
- El Salvador imported $15.65 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 8.53% from $17.11 billion in 2022, more than double the country's export total that year.
- The USA supplied 28.74% of imports, worth $4.50 billion, followed by China at 15.24% ($2.38 billion).
- Mineral fuels were the top import category at 16.31% ($2.55 billion), since El Salvador has no domestic oil or gas production.
- El Salvador's top three suppliers, the USA, China, and Guatemala, made up 54.10% of total import value in 2023.
025-Year Trend
| Year | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | $11.6B | $9.9B | $14.6B | $17.1B | $15.6B |
03Top Import Markets (2023)
| Rank | Partner | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.5B | 28.7% |
| 2 | China | $2.4B | 15.2% |
| 3 | Guatemala | $1.6B | 10.1% |
| 4 | Mexico | $1.3B | 8.2% |
| 5 | Honduras | $788.7M | 5.0% |
| 6 | Nicaragua | $488.6M | 3.1% |
| 7 | Costa Rica | $416.7M | 2.7% |
| 8 | Brazil | $340.3M | 2.2% |
| 9 | South Korea | $301.6M | 1.9% |
| 10 | Japan | $298.2M | 1.9% |
04Top Import Categories (2023)
| Rank | Category | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mineral Fuels, Mineral Oils and Products of their Distillation; Bituminous Substances; Mineral Waxes | $2.6B | 16.3% |
| 2 | Electrical Machinery and Equipment and parts thereof; Sound Recorders and Reproducers, Television Image and Sound Recorders and Reproducers, and Parts and Accessories of such Articles | $1.1B | 7.0% |
| 3 | Nuclear Reactors, Boilers, Machinery and Mechanical Appliances; Parts thereof | $1.1B | 6.8% |
| 4 | Vehicles other than Railway or Tramway Rolling-Stock, and parts and accessories thereof | $1.0B | 6.4% |
| 5 | Plastics and Articles thereof | $836.2M | 5.3% |
| 6 | Pharmaceutical Products | $580.7M | 3.7% |
| 7 | Iron and Steel | $483.6M | 3.1% |
| 8 | Cereals | $433.0M | 2.8% |
| 9 | Miscellaneous Edible Preparations | $419.5M | 2.7% |
| 10 | Articles of Apparel and Clothing Accessories, Knitted or Crocheted | $400.3M | 2.6% |
05Trade Partner Map
06Analysis
A Country That Imports Every Drop of Its Fuel
El Salvador imported $15.65 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 8.53% from $17.11 billion the year before, more than double the country's export total covered elsewhere on this site. Mineral fuels led every import category, worth $2.55 billion, or 16.31% of the total. El Salvador does not produce any oil or natural gas domestically, and imported $1.14 billion of refined petroleum and $218 million of petroleum gas in a recent year, primarily from the United States. With no domestic wells or refineries of its own, every liter of fuel the country burns arrives by ship or pipeline from somewhere else.
Electrical machinery ranked second at 7.04% ($1.10 billion), and machinery and mechanical appliances followed at 6.84% ($1.07 billion), two categories that together point to an economy still assembling and manufacturing goods rather than only shipping raw materials. Vehicles added 6.40% ($1.00 billion), reflecting El Salvador's own lack of a domestic auto industry, and plastics contributed 5.34% ($836.21 million), much of it raw material feeding domestic packaging and manufacturing rather than finished consumer goods.
Pharmaceutical products took 3.71% ($580.67 million), a category shaped by limited domestic drug manufacturing capacity. Iron and steel added 3.09% ($483.56 million), tied to ongoing construction activity. Cereals contributed 2.77% ($432.99 million), and miscellaneous edible preparations added 2.68% ($419.45 million), both food-security categories for a country that imports a meaningful share of what it eats. Apparel and clothing accessories closed out the top ten at 2.56% ($400.26 million), a modest category compared with the same product line's dominant position on El Salvador's export side, a contrast worth noting given how central apparel manufacturing is to the country's economy overall.
The USA and China Together Supply Nearly Half of Everything
The United States supplied 28.74% of El Salvador's imports, worth $4.50 billion. China ranked second at 15.24% ($2.38 billion), and Guatemala followed at 10.12% ($1.58 billion). Combined, those three suppliers made up 54.10% of total import value in 2023.
Mexico added 8.20% ($1.28 billion), and Honduras contributed 5.04% ($788.71 million). Nicaragua took 3.12% ($488.64 million), and Costa Rica added 2.66% ($416.71 million). All four are regional neighbors that also feature prominently on El Salvador's export side under the same Central American trade framework, underscoring how much two-way trade flows in both directions across these borders rather than just one. Brazil contributed 2.17% ($340.35 million), South Korea added 1.93% ($301.63 million), likely tied to the vehicle category, and Japan closed out the top ten at 1.91% ($298.21 million), another vehicle-exporting nation whose share fits the same pattern.
A Trade Gap That Remittances, Not Exports, Have to Cover
El Salvador's import total followed a similar arc to its export total across the five years covered here. It stood at $11.60 billion in 2019, then fell to $9.89 billion in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted global trade. It rebounded to $14.62 billion in 2021 and climbed further to $17.11 billion in 2022, the peak of this five-year window. The 2023 total of $15.65 billion marked an 8.53% pullback from that peak.
El Salvador's import total has run well over double its export total in every year covered here, a gap that ordinary trade revenue alone cannot close. Remittances equaled 24.48% of El Salvador's GDP in 2023, only slightly below the 24.63% recorded in 2022, money sent home mostly by Salvadorans working in the United States. That inflow, not export earnings, is what actually finances a large share of the gap between what the country buys and sells abroad. US labor market conditions and immigration policy carry nearly as much weight over El Salvador's trade balance as anything that shows up directly in this customs data.
That dependency also means El Salvador's import capacity is somewhat insulated from its own export performance. Even in a year when exports fall, as they did in 2023, a steady flow of remittances can keep imports running at a level the country's own trade earnings would never support on their own. Whether that arrangement holds up over time depends on factors well outside this dataset, from US immigration enforcement to the size and earnings of the Salvadoran community working abroad, but its footprint on the numbers here is unmistakable, and it's a dynamic that separates El Salvador's trade profile from countries whose imports rise and fall mainly with their own export earnings.