According to the CIA World Factbook, the Turks and Caicos Islands are two island groups in the North Atlantic Ocean, southeast of The Bahamas, north of Haiti. The islands were part of the United Kingdom's Jamaican colony until 1962, when they assumed the status of a separate crown colony after Jamaica gained its independence. The governor of The Bahamas oversaw affairs in this region from 1965 to 1973. With Bahamian independence, the Turks and Caicos Islands received a separate governor in 1973. Although independence was agreed upon for 1982, the policy was reversed and the Islands are again a British overseas territory.
The total land mass of this island chain is 430 square kilometers which is roughly double the size of Washington D.C. There are no permanent crops, and only 2 percent of the land is arable. The Islands have a total population of about 20,000 people, with a median age of 27.2 years. Of that population, 90 percent is black with the remaining 10 percent considered mixed, European, or of North American. About 98 percent of the population is literate.
The Turks and Caicos economy is based on tourism, fishing, and offshore financial services. Most capital goods and food for domestic consumption are imported. The United States is the leading source of tourist visiting the Islands. American tourists account for more than half of the estimated 93,000 visitors to the Islands in the late 1990s. Major sources of government revenue include fees from offshore financial activities, and customs receipts. GDP per capita was about $9,600 in 2000, the last year in which such figures are available from the CIA Factbook. Approximately 33 percent of the labor force works in government service, and 20 percent are employed in fishing and agriculture. Significant but unspecified numbers of the remaining labor pool work in the tourism industry or in financial and other services. According to a 1997 estimate, unemployment wa...