tourism generates of gdp and has recently grown at a rate of a year a major challenge is to diversify the rural economy to replace the income and jobs in agriculture as the sector continues to decline and to make the most of the inherent comparative advantages linked to a large extent to the natural environment that attracts tourism while it is hard to adequately measure the process elements of an innovation system we can go some way to gauge its effectiveness by examining indicators of scientific and technological output and resources table presents data on select aspects of mexican science and technology infrastructure and compares them with brazil chile and argentina as well as china and south korea