and fish products, aluminum, and
ferrosilicon. Government policies include reducing the budget and
current account deficits, limiting foreign borrowing, containing
inflation, revising agricultural and fishing policies, diversifying
the economy, and privatizing state-owned industries. The government
remains opposed to EU membership, primarily because of Icelanders'
concern about losing control over their fishing resources. Iceland's
economy has been diversifying into manufacturing and service
industries in the last decade, and new developments in software
production, biotechnology, and financial services are taking place.
The tourism sector is also expanding, with the recent trends in
ecotourism and whale watching. Growth had been remarkably steady in
1996-2001 at 3%-5%, but could not be sustained in 2002 in an
environment of global recession. Growth resumed in 2003, and
inflation dropped back from 5% to 2%.

India
India's economy encompasses traditional village farming,
modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries,
and a multitude of support services. Government controls have been
reduced on foreign trade and investment, and privatization of
domestic output has proceeded slowly. The economy has posted an
excellent average growth rate of 6% since 1990, reducing poverty by
about 10 percentage points. India is capitalizing on its large
numbers of well-educated people skilled in the English language to
become a major exporter of software services and software workers.
Despite strong growth, the World Bank and others worry about the
continuing public-sector budget deficit, running at approximately
60% of GDP.

Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean provides major sea routes connecting
the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia with Europe and the Americas.
It carries a particularly heavy traffic of petroleum and petroleum
products from the oilfields of the Persian Gulf and Indonesia. Its
fish are of great and growing importance to the bordering countries
for domestic consumption and export. Fishing fleets from Russia,
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also exploit the Indian Ocean, mainly
for shrimp and tuna. Large reserves of hydrocarbons are being tapped
in the offshore areas of Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and western
Australia. An estimated 40% of the world's offshore oil production
comes from the Indian Ocean. Beach sands rich in heavy mi