The Economy
of an Isle
Breeding in
Balagne [Ph. Desjobert]
Tourism and Economy The economy of Corsica has been marked for a
long time by agriculture and breeding. It has nowadays a straw tertiary
sector as a dominant: services for private individuals and businesses. It
is a little productive consumer economy which is strongly dependent up on
the foreign countries.
The mastery of transport and prices plays a primordial part in it.
Tourism is one of the first isle's industries, it reinforces the
importance to give to transport.
The tourists'number has actually been multiplied by four in twenty
years..
Now population doubles during August and 60% of tourists come to visit
the isle between July and August. This seasonal character marks the
tourist industry, but also the activities which ensue it and the whole
island economy.
Despite the material's modernization and the expansion of services with
added value, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per inhabitant remains the
lowest of the metropolitan France. Its growth rate however follows the
national average. This low level of added value has two main reasons: a
proportion of one working to two non-working and a weak productivity.
Men and Employment The Business [ whose is10% food ] and the
merchant services [ Hotels, Health, Telecom,..] share half of the total
employment.
Agriculture, Industry and BTP provide, of equal parts, a
quarter of it.
The non-merchant Services [ Administrations, State
Education System, local Commmities ] too.
The business, with a strong increase, is now the first merchant sector
of the isle.
Geographically it is unequally distributed and is almost
absent from towns under one hundred inhabitants.
  The
corsican agriculture present very varied types of exploitations.
On the
one hand, a traditional agriculture based on the extensive breeding moving
to summer pastures in the inner isle and the arboriculture of the olive
tree and chestnut tree elsewhere, on the other hand big exploitations of
vegetal, fruit and wine-producing productions of the littoral, especially
on the eastern plain.
The Demographic Evolution
From an ancient tradition,
emigration became massive from 1850. 
It began with the conscriptions, wars, overpopulation of the wealthy
micro-regions such as Castagniccia
or the Balagne,
and with the agriculturals' difficulties. Evolution of the population from
1801 to 1990 The joining to a wealthy metropolis which was being in search
of labour and tempted with the colonial adventure, offered an opening.
When in 1900, the isle's population has reached its maximum, the
young's leaving has then created an imbalance in the death-birth natural
balance and also in the structure of workings.
In 50 years Corsica has lost more than the third of its population, it
went to 190 000 inhabitants in 1955.
Nowadays the few island's population is strongly marked by its
structure and its space distribution. The over 60s represent a quarter of
the population and the foreign workers with their family reach 10%.
The geography is compartmentalized. Almost half of the population is
concentrated in towns of Bastia
and Ajaccio,
whereas the inner isle is depopulated and it poses problems of territory's
facilities and of national and regional development.
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