More than 20% of the Jamaican workforce is linked to agriculture. The country’s main crop is sugar cane, sporting an yearly yield of 190,000 tons (estimates of the early 1990s)Other major crops are banana, citrus fruits, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, coconut, corn, hay, pepper, ginger, mango, potato and arrowroot.In the early 1990s, stock breeders bragged with having some 300,000 cows and oxen, 440,000 goats and 250,000 pigs. Mining is the name of the game as far as industrial development is concerned, yet manufacturing plants produce cement, cigars, fabrics and goods. Electric power is generated from fuel imports. Tourism is the country’s highest profit maker.
Export trade is based on such items as sugar, coffee, rum, molasses and banana. There specialized factories in making fabrics, oil byproducts, clothing and foodstuffs. Alumina, raw sugar, bauxite, banana, rum and coffee
Life expectancy rate is 70,4 years for men and 74,8 for women.Demographics: 220,2 inhabitants per square kilometer. Birth rate: 22%. (1991)Mortality rate: 7%. (1991)Illiteracy: 98,4%Daily calories per capita: 2 558
Bauxite and alumina industry are the core of the Jamaican economy and both yield 60% of the total export volume. In the early 1990s, annual alumina yield peaked 1.6 million metric tons.Industry is ever-growingly important for Jamaica’s economy. In the late 1980s, factories used to employ 133,800 workers.A number of actions taken by the government –favoring tax-exempt imports and the establishment of tax deduction programs- fostered industrialization. Alongside well-established industries as foodstuffs and liquors, industrial plants for manufacturing such items as fabrics, clothing, cotton prints, footwear, paints, agriculture machinery, cement, radio transistors and fertilizers have been set up. An oil refinery in Kingston produces enough fuel to meet half the national energetic needs.
In 1999, the gross national product peaked $3,365 million, thus yielding a 1,380-dollar income per capita.
Tourism is, year in and year out, a huge help to the nation’s economy. Jamaica exports bauxite, sugar, banana and rum.Stock breeding is well developed. There are important bauxite reserves. Cement is manufactured; cigars and cigarettes are rolled and rum and beer are brewed on this island nation.
Jamaica hinges on 340 Km of railroad tracks. In the early 1990s, there were 15,000 Km of roads, only a quarter of them paved, though.Many international airline agencies, and the state-run Air Jamaica company, serve the island with daily flights, while domestic flights are managed by Transjamaican Airways.
