Business
According to countryaah, Tonga has for a long time had a weak economy, mainly due to severe weather that damaged export crops, high unemployment and inflation and extensive relocation. Agriculture accounts for just over 30 percent of employment. The most important forage crops are pumpkins, vanilla and coconuts, which for most years make up the bulk of Tonga’s exports. For personal consumption, root vegetables, breads, watermelons, vegetables, citrus fruits and peanuts are grown.
- According to abbreviationfinder, TO is the 2 letter abbreviation for the country of Tonga.
The industry accounts for about 30 percent of employment. Primarily, building materials, clothing, furniture, sports equipment, beer and coconut oil and craft products are produced. To reduce the need to import fuel, a wave power plant was built in the early 1990s. Tourism makes a significant contribution to the economy and reduces the trade deficit. New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Fiji and the United States are the most important trading partners. Mainly, food, industrial semi-finished products, machinery, transport and fuels are imported.
During the 1990s, Tonga sought new sources of income and energy, and tried to develop fishing and pear farming and to find foreign investors to the processing industries, but the contributions from Tongans abroad account for a large part of the country’s economy.
History. – The first to land on the Tonga Islands were J. Lemaire and WC Schouten, to whom this group of islands did not appear hospitable, due to the character of the residents (1616). In 1643 they met Abel Tasman, who only touched the southern group, and Samuel Wallis in 1767. The Cook, who landed there in 1773, found himself so happy, that he called them “The Friendly Islands “; when he returned there in 1777 he lingered there for almost two months, always maintaining excellent relations with those residents. The northern islands were discovered in 1781 by the Spanish FA Mourelle.
The Tongans had enjoyed, as their legends and the reports of the first visitors attest, a long period of peace, dating back to the first half of the century. XVIII when the assemblies of the nobles and the people were organized in a single feudal state, with an absolute king, under which the slaves stood, without rights, and with a centralized ecclesiastical hierarchy. At the end of the century, internal struggles broke out among the indigenous, which lasted almost half a century. In the midst of these came the Methodist missionaries (1822), who met strong resistance, although they were not massacred like some of the ten of the London Mission Society of 1797, against whom the natives had been incited by escapees from Australian penitentiaries. After the Methodists came the Wesleyans (1830) who had the support of the strongest leader, Taufaahan, who in 1845 put an end to the period of internal strife, and became king with the name of George Tobou I, affirming his dominion with the repression of the anti-Christian rebellion of the Tongans in 1852. The Catholic missionaries arrived in 1841 did not have good luck. The Wesleyans had induced the king to grant an Anglo-Saxon constitution (1839, revised 1862 and 1875): a parliament, a council of ministers and a private council, a prime minister and a complex judicial system. The most famous prime minister of Tonga was Shirley Baker, strange type of adventurer, Wesleyan pastor, retired from the exercise of his ministry, which as a first government action induced King Tobou to break the hitherto cordial relations with the Wesleyan mission based in Sydney in Australia, and to establish a state church, which the Baker then began to use to persecute the his ancient brothers. This lasted for a long time until the British government intervened, which sent the Baker away (1890). In 1876 the government of the Tonga Islands had entered into a friendly treaty with the German government; a similar one was made with Great Britain three years later; one with the United States of America in 1888. In 1886 a treaty between Germany and England recognized equal interests in those islands to the two powers; but in 1899 Germany gave up all interest (agreement for the Samoa Islands). By 1900, by RH Thomson, who had driven out the Baker, the English protectorate asserted itself, placing the British High Commissioner alongside and above the local governments. While until then German, American and English coins had been running in Tonga, in 1905 the financial administration passed to England, and the only currency remained the English one. The Tongan government is now composed of a sovereign, assisted by an annual legislative assembly, made up of 7 nobles, 7 representatives of the people, elect, and the 7 ministers of the crown. Under the English protectorate, scholastic activity developed greatly; there is also a Tonga College, based in the capital Nukualofa.