Economy
Traditionally the city's economy had depended almost entirely on the sugar cane industry. Since around the 1950s, however, the town's economy has diversified and today its economy revolves around a mixed-industry manufacturing sector, retail, and tourism. The building of a mega port, anticipated to be completed in 2012, is expected to add significantly to the area's economy. Agriculture, retail, and services are also significant players in the local economy. "It is an agricultural, trade, and distribution center. Industries include tourism, the processing of agricultural products, rum distilling, canning, and diamond cutting. Manufactures include textiles, shoes, cement, paper, electrical devices, and metal products." The city, though, suffers from an unemployment rate that hovers around the 15 percent mark.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)