Economy of Austria, Its People,
Culture & Flag

Though most of the population comprises of German-speaking, the country has a varied ethnic mixture. About 99 percent of the population is ethnic Austrian. Minority groups include Croats and Hungarians (in Burgenland), Slovenes (in Kärnten (Carinthia)), Czechs (in Vienna), as well as small numbers of Italians, Serbs, and Romanians.

Austria is rich in culture, it has a rich heritage in art work which includes wood carvings, Gobelins tapestries, hand-carved and hand-painted chests, intricately forged grates and other ironwork, stained-glass windows, Augarten porcelain from Vienna, lace, and leatherwork. Wood carving and sculpturing have long been popular among the people of the Alpine valleys. Austria is also known as the land of music and has seen the birth of many a musicians and composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Anton Bruckner, Joseph Haydn…the list can go on and on. The capital, Vienna, has two famous opera houses, the Volksoper (People's Opera), opened in 1904, and the Vienna State Opera, completed in 1869 and stories of its beautiful architecture and fine performances are spread far and wide.

The Austria flag consists of three equal horizontal bands - red on the top, white in the middle and again red at the bottom.
Please click here to view the Flag of Austria

The economy of Austria is mainly based on private and public enterprise. Most of the industries, including oil production and refining; the large commercial banks; and principal companies in river and air transportation, railroad equipment, electric machinery and appliances, mining, iron, steel, and chemical manufacturing, and natural-gas and electric power production were nationalized in 1946. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of these companies saw a reduction in government control due to the sale of shares to private investors. Over the years, Austria has maintained close ties with the countries of Eastern Europe. Since the collapse of Communism in those countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than 1,000 Western companies have chosen Austria as their base for new Eastern European operations. In 1999 the estimated annual national budget included revenues of $78.2 billion and expenditures of $84.5 billion. Gross domestic product (GDP) was $188.5 billion in 2001.