ABSTRACT
Victoria, the capital of Seychelles, could be described as "a sordid and graceless slum," with "ramshackle, tumbledown shops and shanties" and "a characteristic odor of rancid coconut oil, dried fish and bad drains." The first effect of the decision to build an airport and develop a tourist industry was a large-scale construction boom in the early 1970s-fueled by unprecedented foreign investments-with construction accounting for as much as 45 percent of growth of gross domestic product in 1971. Tourism has also been the major dynamo producing an incomparable degree of inflation in the Seychelles in the 1970s and 1980s. From a purely economic point of view, tourism was the savior of the Seychelles in the 1970s because it made up more than half the trade deficits incurred in the entire decade. The Seychelles government during the British days tried to encourage agriculture by letting out small 5-acre "blocks" of land for nominal rents.
