Samoa’s population in 1999 was estimated at 177,000 people, with a growth rate of 1.2%. The economy of Samoa was largely dependent on its services sector, which accounted for around 65% of the country’s GDP. This was supplemented by the agricultural and manufacturing industries. Foreign relations in 1999 were largely positive with the country enjoying strong ties with many Pacific nations and the wider international community. Politically, Samoa had been a parliamentary republic since 1962 when it formally adopted a democratic system. The ruling party at this time was the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) which had been in power since 1982. In 1999, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi was Prime Minister and had been since 1998. See ethnicityology for Samoa in the year of 2018.
Yearbook 1999
Samoa. Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Samoa. Labor Minister Luagalau Levaula Kamu was assassinated in July in the capital Apia in connection with an anniversary celebration of the ruling Human Rights Protection Party. According to a prosecutor, the minister was murdered for not being able to reveal widespread corruption and mismanagement by public funds. A man who admitted the murder was sentenced to death in August, but he is not likely to be executed because previously sentenced death sentences have been converted to life imprisonment. The convicted man’s mother was minister of women’s affairs at the time of the murder, and she was charged with prosecution for planning the act.
- Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of ASM which stands for Samoa and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.
The same charges were brought against another former minister. He was further accused of having also planned murder of the country’s head of government Tuilaepa Sailele. The trial of the two former ministers was postponed until January 2000.
POPULATION AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
By 1998 the population had reached 174. 000 residents, according to United Nations estimates, with an average annual increase of 12 ‰ in the period 1990 – 97. The scarce employment opportunities still fuel a consistent migratory flow, especially towards New Zealand, American Samoa and Australia. The population, largely concentrated on the island of Upolu, is mainly distributed along the coasts, where the large plantations are located. According to the parameters of the United Nations, Samoa remains a very backward country, heavily dependent on international aid and emigrant remittances.
In the early nineties, GDP recorded a sharp decline, which was followed by some recovery, and then, again, a fall (+ 9, 6 % in 1995 ; + 1.5 % in 1997). Growth is seriously compromised by adverse climatic factors, inadequate transport infrastructures, large external debt and modest exports. In the mid-nineties, the government launched a reform program aimed at encouraging the take-off of industry and tourism; in order to incentivize investments in the private sector, controls on foreign capital flows have been abolished. In 1996 a trade cooperation agreement was signed with China.
Agriculture remains the main economic resource of the island; it is mainly plantation agriculture, whose products (coconuts, cocoa, bananas, sugar cane) cover about 80 % of the total value of exports; for internal needs, corn, taro, breadfruit and yam are grown. The breeding of livestock (pigs, cattle, poultry) is of little importance, even for internal consumption. Forests, which still cover about 50% of the surface, they supply fair quantities of timber, partly exported. The industrial apparatus remains weak, based above all on food industries (breweries, oil mills), textiles and woodworking. In the first half of the 1990s, the establishment of some large US and Japanese companies led to a sustained increase in industrial employment. Tourism is constantly expanding, which contributes 15 % to the composition of GDP, and banking activities linked to the role of an off-shore financial center that the country has been taking on since the late 1980s.
