The previous two chapters have been concerned with foreign trade and in particular the export sector. In this chapter we look at the domestic economy. Although the Caribbean countries had taken export specialisation to its highest level, there were still many activities that were geared to the home market. Some of these were complementary to the export sector, but a few competed with imports. With the exception of public administration, there is a deficiency of data on the domestic economy. There are no countries, for example, that published a series on industrial output, no regular figures for housing starts and very little on financial services. We therefore have to proceed on the basis of partial data, pieced together from different sources and checked against other evidence.

The first section of the chapter is concerned with the production of goods and services by the private sector for the domestic economy. By far the most important activity was Domestic Use Agriculture (DUA), that is, agricultural goods produced either for autoconsumption or for sale in the home market. These goods were perishable and therefore could not be easily imported at a time of sailing ships. In some countries, there was also a thriving fishing industry geared to the home market.