Yearbook 2009
Jamaica. According to countryaah, Jamaica’s 67-year-old Governor-General Sir Kenneth Hall announced in January that he has decided to step down for health reasons. Hall was replaced by Patrick Allen, who was installed as the nation’s sixth Governor General at a ceremony in the capital Kingston on February 26. Allen, 58, had been active, among other things, in the Protestant community of the Seventh-day Adventists. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation JA which stands for the nation of Jamaica.
On the evening of April 19, a Canadian aircraft carrying 174 passengers and crew on board at the international airport in the city of Montego Bay was hijacked. The hijacking was carried out by a lonely 21-year-old Jamaican man who was later described by the country’s information ministry as a mentally unstable youngster. The hijacker demanded that the plane fly to Cuba. After eight hours of tense waiting, all on board could be released unharmed by police and soldiers storming the aircraft. The hijacker gave up without resistance. In October, the 21-year-old was sentenced to a total of 83 years in prison for a number of serious crimes in connection with the hijacking. But since he began serving all the punishments at the same time, the man would in practice be jailed for 20 years.
The joint passport for the CARICOM countries became valid during the year. As Jamaica is a member of the Caribbean Community Regional Cooperation (CARICOM), the Jamaicans were able to start using the passport. CARICOM works to increase regional integration between the member states, for example in foreign policy and the economy.
The country’s biggest sprinter star of all time, Usain Bolt, won three gold medals in the athletics world championships in Berlin in August. Bolt won new world record times in the 100 meters and 200 meters. Victory times were 9.58 seconds and 19.19 seconds respectively. Bolt was also a member of the Jamaican relay team that won four times a hundred yards. Also the baton for ladies at four times a hundred meters was won by Jamaica.
JAMAICA. – The total area is 10,962 km 2. The population, made up of 76% blacks, 15% mulattoes and the rest of Asians (Indians, Chinese, Lebanese) and Europeans (British), amounted to 1,813,709 residents at the 1970 census. had detected 1,609,814, for which in the decade there was an average annual increase of 1.3%, considerably lower than the natural one which still exceeds 2% today, although it has decreased significantly, starting from 1964, subsequently to an active campaign for the limitation of births: in fact, the Jamaican population still makes intense use of emigration, directed towards the United States, Great Britain and Canada. In 1975, according to an estimate, the residents had risen to 2,201,000 (density 201). The capital, Kingston, had 111,789 residents in 1970. in the city and 475,518 in the vast metropolitan area, which also includes the urban centers of Saint Andrew and Port Royal; it exercises an absolute dominance in the country, centralizing, together with the political and cultural functions, most of the industrial, commercial and port ones. Among the other cities, only Montego Bay (about 50,000 residents), On the northern coast, which has become a major tourist center, has had considerable development.
From an exclusively rural town, Jamaica has become a state with an essentially mining economy. Agriculture retains importance for domestic needs and still contributes to exports, but to a modest extent. Cane (3.5 million q of sugar in 1973) and banana trees occupy most of the cultivated land.
Jamaica was the world’s leading bauxite producer from the late 1950s to 1972, when it was overtaken by Australia. The discovery and growing extraction of the mineral have changed the composition of exports and foreign trade. Three US companies and one Canadian extract bauxite (15.2 million t in 1974), which is partly started up as such in the United States and Canada and partly transformed into alumina (in Kirkvine, Ewarton, Nain and at Clarendon), also exported to the two large North American countries. Alumina production was 1.7 million tonnes in 1970.
In 1972 the installed power was 500,000 kW and the energy produced was 1980 million kWh.
In addition to the plants for the production of alumina, Jamaica owns sugar refineries, rum distilleries, other food factories, a cement factory, an oil refinery. The largest industrial agglomeration has arisen, suitably planned, in the metropolitan area of Kingston, W of the city.
Despite the increase in sales of bauxite and alumina, which form half of exports, the trade balance remains clearly passive due to the strong import of consumer and instrumental products. Relations with the United States have increased and those with Great Britain have decreased, which however remains a major buyer of sugar; there are significant exchanges with Canada and, limited to the import of oil, with Venezuela.
The number of tourists is growing rapidly (480,000 in 1972).
Jamaica has various ports (among which Kingston clearly predominates), two international airports (Kingston-Palisadoes and Montego Bay), 4300 km of roads and 400 km of railways. In 1969, 90,000 cars were on the road.