For example, Puerto Rico is more economically others, which face such constraints as -~-geographic isolation from mainland United States; major world developed markets and than the --~small land areas and populations; --limited natural resources, especially petroleum; --infrastructure and facilities inadequate to support the expansion of local industry and to attract siqnificant outside investment; ' --limited skilled labor preneurial skills; and forces and managerial --large public sectors, which tend to needed for private sector development. | drain and entre- resources In addition to these largely indigenous constraints, territory. officials also cite a number of federal constraints to development, primarily caused by inconsistent and sometimes insensitive treatment in formulating and applying federal policies, laws, and programs. PROBLEMS WITH FEDERAL POLICIES The economic United States has no overall strategy for encouraging development or promoting in a comprehensive and con- sistent fashion the private sectors in most of its territories. With the possible exception of an economic program in Puerto Rico in the late 1940s, known as Operation Bootstrap, no longterm development efforts were pursued for the territories. Instead, the federal government has tended to pursue remedies to individual development problems outside the context of any concerted policy or plan. Interior officials believe the federal government ought not dictate such strategy, but allow the territories to determine their own individual strategies. Many territorial officials believe the tinues to pursue a generally inconsistent, United States conuncoordinated, and sometimes insensitive policy to the territories. governor of Guam, in a December 1980 presentation incoming Reagan Administration, noted that: lAppendix IX provides a listing of GAO and other The former before the reports and studies which detail many of the development constraints facing each territory. 25 9000232