Wake Island
Economic activity is limited to providing services to
military personnel and contractors located on the island. All food
and manufactured goods must be imported.

Wallis and Futuna
The economy is limited to traditional subsistence
agriculture, with about 80% labor force earnings from agriculture
(coconuts and vegetables), livestock (mostly pigs), and fishing.
About 4% of the population is employed in government. Revenues come
from French Government subsidies, licensing of fishing rights to
Japan and South Korea, import taxes, and remittances from expatriate
workers in New Caledonia.

West Bank
The West Bank - the larger of the two areas under the
Palestinian Authority (PA)- has experienced a general decline in
economic growth and a degradation in economic conditions made worse
since the second intifadah began in September 2000. The downturn has
been largely the result of the Israeli closure policies - the
imposition of border closures in response to security incidents in
Israel - which disrupted labor and commodity market relationships.
In 2001, and even more severely in 2002, Israeli military measures
in PA areas resulted in the destruction of much capital plant, the
disruption of administrative structure, and widespread business
closures. Including the Gaza Strip, the UN estimates that more than
100,000 Palestinians out of the 125,000 who used to work in Israeli
settlements, or in joint industrial zones, have lost their jobs.
International aid of $2 billion to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in
2004 prevented the complete collapse of the economy and allowed some
reforms in the government's financial operations. In 2005, high
unemployment and limited trade opportunities, due to continued
closures both within the West Bank and externally, stymied growth.

Western Sahara
Western Sahara depends on pastoral nomadism, fishing,
and phosphate mining as the principal sources of income for the
population. The territory lacks sufficient rainfall for sustainable
agricultural production, and most of the food for the urban
population must be imported. All trade and other economic activities
are controlled by the Moroccan Government. Moroccan energy interests
in 2001 signed contracts to explore for oil off the coast of Western
Sahara, which has angered the Polisario. Incomes and standards of
living in Western Sahara are substantially below the Moroccan level.

World
Global output rose by 4.4% in 2005, led by China (9.3%), India
(7.6%), and Russia (5.9%). The other 14 successor nations of the
USSR and the other old Warsaw Pact nations again experienced widely
divergent growth rates; the three Baltic nations continued as strong
performers, in the 7% range of growth. Growth results posted by the
major industrial countries varied from no gain for Italy to a strong
gain by the United States (3.5%). The developing nations also varied
in their growth results, with many countries facing population
increases that erode gains in output. Externally, the nation-state,
as a bedrock economic-political institution, is steadily losing
control over international flows of people, goods, funds, and
technology. Internally, the central government often finds its
control over resources slipping as separatist regional movements -
typically based on ethnicity - gain momentum, e.g., in many of the
successor states of the former Soviet Union, in the former
Yugoslavia, in India, in Iraq, in Indonesia, and in Canada.
Externally, the central government is losing decisionmaking powers
to international bodies, notably the EU. In Western Europe,
governments face the difficult political problem of channeling
resources away from welfare programs in order to increase investment
and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The addition of 80
million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is
exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification,
underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own
internal problems and priorities, the industrialized countries
devote insufficient resources to deal effectively with the poorer
areas of the world, which, at least from an economic point of view,
are becoming further marginalized. The introduction of the euro as
the common currency of much of Western Europe in January 1999, while
paving the way for an integrated economic powerhouse, poses economic
risks because of varying levels of income and cultural and political
differences among the participating nations. The terrorist attacks
on the US on 11 September 2001 accentuated a further growing risk to
global prosperity, illustrated, for example, by the reallocation of
resources away from investment to anti-terrorist programs. The
opening of war in March 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq
added new uncertainties to global economic prospects. After the
coalition victory, the complex political difficulties and the high
economic cost of establishing domestic order in Iraq became major
global problems that continued into 2006.

Yemen
Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, has
reported meager growth since 2000. Its economic fortunes depend
mostly on oil. Oil revenues increased in 2005 due to higher prices.
Yemen was on an IMF-supported structural adjustment program designed
to modernize and streamline the economy, which led to substantial
foreign debt relief and restructuring. However, government
dedication to the program waned in 2001 for political reasons. Yemen
is struggling to control excessive spending and rampant corruption.
The people have grown increasingly upset over the economic
situation. In July 2005, a reduction in fuel subsidies sparked
riots; over 20 Yemenis were killed and hundreds were injured.

Zambia
Despite progress in privatization and budgetary reform,
Zambia's economic growth remains somewhat below the 6%-7% needed to
reduce poverty significantly. Privatization of government-owned
copper mines relieved the government from covering mammoth losses
generated by the industry and greatly improved the chances for
copper mining to return to profitability and spur economic growth.
Copper output has increased steadily since 2004, due to higher
copper prices and the opening of new mines. The maize harvest was
again good in 2005, helping boost GDP and agricultural exports.
Cooperation continues with international bodies on programs to
reduce poverty, including a new lending arrangement with the IMF in
the second quarter of 2004. A tighter monetary policy will help cut
inflation, but Zambia still has a serious problem with high public
debt.

Zimbabwe
The government of Zimbabwe faces a wide variety of
difficult economic problems as it struggles with an unsustainable
fiscal deficit, an overvalued exchange rate, soaring inflation, and
bare shelves. Its 1998-2002 involvement in the war in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, for example, drained hundreds of millions of
dollars from the economy. Badly needed support from the IMF has been
suspended because of the government's arrears on past loans, which
it began repaying in 2005. The official annual inflation rate rose
from 32% in 1998, to 133% at the end of 2004, and 585% at the end of
2005, although private sector estimates put the figure much higher.
Meanwhile, the official exchange rate fell from 24 Zimbabwean
dollars per US dollar in 1998 to 96,000 in mid-January 2006. The
government's land reform program, characterized by chaos and
violence, has badly damaged the commercial farming sector, the
traditional source of exports and foreign exchange and the provider
of 400,000 jobs, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of food
products.

This page was last updated on 19 December, 2006

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