Economy
Ivory Coast has, for the region, a relatively high income per capita (USD 960 in 2007) and plays a key role in transit trade for neighboring, landlocked countries. The country is the largest economy in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, constituting 40 percent of the monetary union’s total GDP. The country is the world's largest exporter of cocoa, and the fourth largest exporter of goods, in general, in sub-Saharan Africa (following South Africa, Nigeria and Angola).
The maintenance of close ties to France since independence in 1960, diversification of agriculture for export, and encouragement of foreign investment, have been factors in the economic growth of Ivory Coast. In recent years Ivory Coast has been subject to greater competition and falling prices in the global marketplace for its primary agricultural crops: coffee and cocoa. That, compounded with high internal corruption, makes life difficult for the grower and those exporting into foreign markets.
Read more about this topic: Ivory Coast
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)