Economy
The island's infrastructure is only weakly built. The inhabitants practice mainly subsistence agriculture. The government seeks to change this with the help of international organizations. In the villages vanilla, tamarind, almonds and other nuts are cultivated. In the forests sandalwood is cut down for trade.
The latest geological explorations have discovered valuable resources such as gipsum, kaolin, petroleum, natural gas, tin, gold, and diamonds.
Alor's highly-esteemed snorkeling and diving promise an increase in tourism in the future. Depletion of the fisheries has however damaged the coral reefs in recent years.
Read more about this topic: Alor Island
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)