Mining in Ecuador played a small role in the Ecuadorian economy in the 1980s, contributing only 0.7 percent to the GDP in 1986 and employing about 7,000 persons. Inaccessibility of the regions where minerals were located and the incomplete exploration of resources hampered mining activities. Although observers believed that Ecuador had reserves of gold, silver, copper, zinc, uranium, lead, sulfur, and kaolin, as well as limestone the latter dominated the industry. Miners generally produced limestone in many small operations countrywide and used it in local cement plants.

Gold, largely forgotten since its early exploitation in the sixteenth century, grew in importance in the 1980s; by 1987 Ecuador was exporting 2.4 tons per year. The southern Sierra region held the country's largest deposits; the newest veins were discovered in the southeastern province of Zamora-Chinchipe.

In 1985 Congress passed a new law to encourage foreign exploration and investment in the mining industry. Designed to simplify regulation of the industry, this legislation also offered higher financial incentives for the investor and lower overall taxation and established the Ecuadorian Institute of Minerals (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Minería—Inemin) under the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Ecuador (ⁱ/ˈɛkwədɔr/ E-kwə-dawr), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor], which literally translates to the "Republic of the Equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, (along with Chile), that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland.

The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 275,830 km² (106,500 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas. Ecuador is also home—despite its size—to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of the Galápagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world. The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.