
- Sovereign: Queen Elizabeth II (1952).
- Governor-General: Frederick Ballantyne (2002).
- Prime Minister: Ralph Gonsalves (2001).
- Current government officials.
- Total area: 150 sq mi (389 sq km).
- Population (2006 est.): 117,848 (growth rate: 0.3%); birth rate: 16.2/1000; infant mortality rate: 14.4/1000; life expectancy: 73.8; density per sq mi: 900.
- Capital and largest city: Kingstown, 17,600.
- Monetary unit: East Caribbean dollar.
- Languages: English, French patois.
- Ethnicity/race: black 66%, mixed 19%, East Indian 6%, Carib Amerindian 2%, other 7%.
- Religions: Anglican 47%, Methodist 28%, Roman Catholic 13%, Hindu, Seventh-Day Adventist, other Protestant.
- Literacy rate: 96% (1970 est.).
- Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2002 est.): $342 million; per capita $2,900.
- Real growth rate: 0.7%. Inflation: –0.4% (2001 est.).
- Unemployment: 15% (2001 est.).
- Arable land: 18%.
- Agriculture: bananas, coconuts, sweet potatoes, spices; small numbers of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats; fish.
- Labor force: 67,000 (1984 est.); agriculture 26%, industry 17%, services 57% (1980 est.). Industries: food processing, cement, furniture, clothing, starch.
- Natural resources: hydropower, cropland.
- Exports: $37 million (2004 est.): bananas 39%, eddoes and dasheen (taro), arrowroot starch, tennis racquets.
- Imports: $225 million (2004 est.): foodstuffs, machinery and equipment, chemicals and fertilizers, minerals and fuels.
- Major trading partners: UK, Barbados, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, U.S., Grenada, Dominica (2004).
- Member of Commonwealth of Nations.
- Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: 20,500 (1998).
- Radio broadcast stations: AM 1, FM 3, shortwave 0 (1998).
- Radios: 77,000 (1997).
- Television broadcast stations: 1 (plus three repeaters) (1997).
- Televisions: 18,000 (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 15 (2000).
- Internet users: 3,500 (2001).
- Transportation: Railways: 0 km.
- Highways: total: 1,040 km; paved: 320 km; unpaved: 720 km (1999 est.).
- Ports and harbors: Kingstown.
- Airports: 6 (2002).
- International disputes: protests Venezuela's claim to give full effect to Aves Island, which creates a Venezuelan EEZ/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.
|