Yearbook 2005
Vanuatu. According to countryaah, Port-Vila is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Vanuatu. Vanuatu’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sato Kilman visited China in January, the first official visit between the countries following Vanuatu’s controversial recognition of Taiwan in the autumn of 2004. It was then Prime Minister Serge Vohor who suddenly established diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which angered both the government and the other. China. The action forced Vohor to resign. In December 2004, the new Prime Minister, Ham Lini, severed relations with Taiwan and returned to unilateral relations with China. During Kilman’s visit, the Chinese government promised increased aid to Vanuatu.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym VU stands for the country of Vanuatu and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
After 18 months of negotiations, Vanuatu and Australia agreed in April on a new five-year development cooperation agreement with a particular focus on agriculture and tourism. During this period, Australia will provide Vanuatu with the equivalent of US $ 1.4 million in aid. During the political chaos in Vanuatu in 2004, Australia, the country’s largest donor, had threatened to withdraw its support.
In July, Prime Minister Ham Lini surprisingly replaced two ministers. One of them was the Minister of Infrastructure and the reason was believed to be a conflict over the composition of the state airline Air Vanuatu’s board. In November another two ministers were replaced. Following a strike on the financially pressured Air Vanuatu in August, about 20 of the more than 100 strikers were dismissed. demanded collective bargaining.
HUMAN AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
Island state of Oceania, located in the west-central Pacific Ocean. The population (186,678 residents at the 1999 census) is of Melanesian stock and only 23 % urbanized and distributed in the only two important centers of the archipelago, the capital Port Vila, on the island of Éfaté, and Luganville, on the coasts. southern of the island of Espiritu Santo. In 2005-06 the Manaro, a 1500 m high volcanic mountain on the island of Ambae, threatened to go into business, putting the lives of the residents at risk.
The economy has suffered from the strong dependence on agriculture, centered on the production and export of cocoa and copra: in fact the sector is too exposed to weather conditions (as happened in February 2004, when the islands were devastated by the cyclone Ivy ) and depends on the price fluctuations of these two products on international markets. The government has therefore tried to diversify production activities, investing in the development of tourism, but this initiative is hampered by the lack of infrastructure, consequently the country’s income is growing at a rate that is too low and in any case lower than the population growth, and about 40 % of the population thus lives below the poverty line.
