Owing to the small size of the local market and the lack of raw materials, manufacturing occurs on a very limited scale. As of 1991, only 2,563 persons were employed in a total of eightyeight enterprises, twelve of them parastatals. Most employed fewer than ten people, and only five firms employed as many as 100. A number are import-substitution industries (see Glossary), the largest of which is a brewery and soft drink plant. Other firms include cigarette, clothing, paint, plastics, and furniture factories, cinnamon and coconut processing plants, and some handicrafts catering to the tourist industry. To encourage foreign interest in the manufacturing sector, the government has developed a new investment code guaranteeing full repatriation of profits and capital, protection against nationalization, free import of capital goods, and other incentives. The government reserves the right, however, to require that the state share an interest in larger-scale industrial activities.

Data as of August 1994