provides a connection between the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) rail network and the South African ports of Richards Bay and Durban. From the mid-1980s foreign investment in the manufacturing sector boosted economic growth rates significantly. Since mid-1985, the depreciated value of the currency has increased the competitiveness of Swazi exports and moderated the growth of imports, generating trade surpluses. During the 1990s, the country often ran small trade deficits. Sugar industry Eswatini is the fourth largest producer of sugar in Africa and is 25th in production in the world. This demonstrates the immense focus of the industry in order to continue to grow their economy. Eswatini's GDP was $8.621 billion (US dollars) in 2014 based on purchasing power parity and of that 7.2% of that is from the agriculture sector and of that sector, sugarcane and sugar products have the largest impact on GDP. According to the World CIA Factbook, wood pulp and sugarcane were the largest exports of Eswatini until the wood pulp producer closed in January 2010. This left the sugarcane industry as the sole main export. The largest company that produces sugar in Eswatini is the Royal Eswatini Sugar Corporation (RES Corporation) and it produces a little under two-thirds of total sugar in the country and produces over 3,000 jobs for the people of Eswatini. The RES Corporation is composed of two main sugar mill producers, Mhlume and Simunye, which produce a combined 430,000 tons of cane per season. The second largest sugarcane company is Ubombo Sugar Limited which has grown from producing 5,600 tons in 1958 to approximately 230,000 tons of sugar annually. The third largest sugarcane producer is the Tambankulu Estate (largest independent sugar estate) and it produces 62,000 tons of sugar annually on 3,816 hectares of land. The largest export partners of Eswatini and the larger Southern African Development Community (SADC) is the European Union. The SADC is a group of many southern African countries who have banded together in order to try to improve their individual socioeconomic status. In 2014-2015 the sugar production of Eswatini was 680,881 metric tons and of this about 355,000 metric tons of sugar was shipped to the European Union, larger than any other export partner. Another trade partner for Eswatini was the United States where they shipped 34,000 metric tons of sugar in the 2014-2015 year under the Tariff Rate Quota. These numbers are up from past years