Industry
In total, industrial production accounted for almost 37% of the Cuban GDP, or US$6.9 billion, and employs 24% of the population, or 2,671,440 people, in 1996.
More recently Cuba's world-class biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry is gaining in its importance to the economy. It has been claimed that soon it will become Cuba's main source of foreign exchange. Among the products sold internationally are vaccines against various viral and bacterial pathogens, and promising anti-cancer vaccines are undergoing exhaustive clinical trials. Some Cuban scientists, like V. Verez-Bencomo, have been awarded international prizes for their contributions in biotechnology and Sugar Cane. Cuban vaccines are sold, among other countries, in Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and several Latin American countries. For example, the drug Heberprot-P has been developed as a cure for diabetic foot ulcer and has had success in many Third-World Markets.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Cuba
Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“As our boys and men are all expecting to be Presidents, so our girls and women must all hold themselves in readiness to preside in the White House; and in no city in the world can honest industry be more at a discount than in this capital of the government of the people.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“Do not put off your work until tomorrow and the day after. For the sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor the one who puts off his work; industry aids work, but the man who puts off work always wrestles with disaster.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)