Dominican Republic INDUSTRY
Workroom of a microenterprise shoe factory, Santiago
Courtesy Inter-American Foundation
Industrial Free Zone
Courtesy United States Agency for International Development
Manufacturing
Manufacturing, particularly assembly operations in free
zones, constituted one of the most dynamic sectors of the
Dominican economy in the 1980s. As had been true of
mining, the
growing role of manufacturing accelerated the
industrialization
and the diversification processes affecting the island's
economy.
Manufacturing in 1988 contributed about 17 percent of GDP,
employed 8 percent of the labor force, and generated about
onethird of exports, although assembly exports did not appear
in
normal trade data because of their free zone origins. The
sector
consisted of traditional manufacturing, with large roles
for both
the public and the private sectors, and free-zone
manufacturing,
consisting mainly of assembly operations with some agroprocessing as well. Growth in manufacturing during the
1980s
centered on the free zones; their projected employment of
as many
as 180,000 workers by 1991, when compared with a total of
only
16,000 workers in 1980, was expected to represent the most
dramatic increase in assembly labor in the world during
that tenyear period. Manufacturing's export performance was
equally
dramatic. Manufactured goods went from 11 percent of total
exports in 1980 to 31 percent by 1987.
Data as of December 1989
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