| Saint Kitts and Nevis |  |  | | Basic facts | | | The country | |
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| | Capital: Basseterre | | Area: 269 sq km; 104 sq miles | | Population: 38,756 (July 2001 est.) | | Urbanisation: Urban 33 per cent (1998 Estimate); Rural 67 per cent (1998 Estimate) | |
Economy
| Exports: Machinery, food, electronics, sugar, honey, beverages and tobacco
| Industry: Sugar processing, tourism, cotton, salt, copra, clothing, footwear, beverages
| Agriculture: Cash crop: sugar cane; subsistence crops: rice, yams, vegetables, bananas
| Currency: 1 East Caribbean dollar (EC$), consisting of 100 cents
| Natural resources: Arable land
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The people
| Ethnic: Predominantly Black African, some British, Portuguese, and Lebanese.
| Language: English is the official language, but a local dialect is also spoken.
| Religion: Anglican, other Protestant denominations, Roman Catholic
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The history
| Independence: Granted on 19 September 1983 from the United Kingdom. The inhabitants of Nevis went to the polls on August 10, 1998, to decide whether it should secede from its sister island of St Kitts. The results revealed, contrary to expectations, that 61.8 per cent of the electorate supported independence. This fell just short of the two-thirds majority required under the terms of the constitution of the two-island federation.
| Government: St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla were united in 1871 as a British dependency that became an internally self-governing member of the West Indies Associated States in 1967. In the same year Anguilla withdrew from the union with St Kitts and Nevis, becoming first an independent republic then, at its own request, a dependency of the United Kingdom. St Kitts and Nevis jointly attained full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1983 under their official name, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
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