Industry
The industrial sector contributed an estimated 32.2 percent to the country's GDP in 1999, led by mining (ferronickel, gold, and silver) and the manufacture of goods for export to the United States. To a lesser extent, there is the manufacture of food products, consumer non-durables, and building materials for the local market and for neighboring Haiti. The sector employed an estimated 24.3 percent of the workforce in 1998.
About 500 companies in the Dominican Republic manufacture goods primarily for the North American market. Situated in 50 industrial free zones around the country, these mostly foreign-owned corporations take advantage of generous tax and other financial inducements offered by the government to businesses that operate within the zones. Approximately 200,000 people, or about 8 percent of the workforce, are employed in this sector. They mostly produce clothing, electronic components, footwear, and leather goods, which are assembled. The raw materials or semi-manufactured goods are usually imported duty-free from other developing countries (electronic parts are imported from industrialized Puerto Rico) and put together in the free zones. Products created are cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, perfumes & foodstuffs. The value of exports amounted to US$1.9 billion in 1996, but the contribution to the trade balance was only US$520 million because many of the basic materials for the free zones had to be imported and paid for.
Other, more traditional manufacturing is based on sugar refining, cement, iron and steel production, and food processing. Rum is a significant export commodity, and beer and cigarettes are manufactured for local consumption. Most industry of this sort is located around the working-class perimeter of Santo Domingo and other large towns.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of The Dominican Republic
Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“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)