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Recent decades have seen fundamental changes in the basis of the Welsh economy. Coal-mining and traditional heavy industries like shipbuilding, which were the backbone of the economy from the 19th century, have almost died out. In contrast, the service sector, notably tourism and financial services, has expanded hugely, and there has been an influx of new, generally light, industries which have diversified the manufacturing base. Government support to help in the rebuilding of the most depressed of the old industrial areas is channelled through the Welsh Development Agency; help for rural areas comes through the Development Board for Rural Wales. The main programme for economic and urban regeneration has focused on the former mining villages and towns of the south Wales valleys. Helped by improvements to road and rail links, such government initiatives, combined with active local efforts to bring in new jobs, have made Wales particularly successful in attracting investment from overseas, especially from Japanese and other East Asian companies. In recent years, the country has received about 20 per cent of all overseas inward investment in the United Kingdom. Together with domestic private investment, this has led to the creation of thousands of new jobs (including 24,000 in the south Wales valleys) with many more in the pipeline.