South Carolina picks up a step on its big brother.

Jim Kleckley is associate director for planning and institutional research at East Carolina University. He's also chief forecaster and editor of Outlook North Carolina and Outlook South Carolina quarterly economic reports. He says the Tar Heel State's little brother down under is beating it in economic growth and will keep doing so for at least the next year.

BNC: So North Carolina isn't the strongest economy in the Southeast?

Kleckley: Our real personal income has been below the national average in '98 and '99. I think that might be the effect of hurricanes, especially Floyd. South Carolina's real personal income is growing faster than ours. And real personal income, income after inflation, is what matters. It's the benefit of economic growth that comes back to you and me.

Ours is still higher.

True. But they're catching up. In '99, ours per capita was $24,900. Theirs was $22,300. We're both still way below the national average of $28,600.

Isn't our economy much larger? Doesn't that make it hard for us to grow as fast?

Yeah, but we've also seen a change in North Carolina. We're back to the real driver for our growth being the I-85 corridor. If you look at the three parts of South Carolina -- coastal, midlands and upstate -- they're all about the same size economically.

What do they have that we don't?

Their coast, which is where a lot of their development is. Myrtle Beach is getting a lot of retirement. Same with Hilton Head. Sun City put in a big community there several years ago. We'll never have the same amount of coastal development because of topography. With the Outer Banks, there's just not as much room here. Charleston is really doing well, too.

Despite dire predictions, Charleston bounced back quickly from the 1996 closing of its naval base and shipyard.

Absolutely, and in the early '90s, the base employed 10,000 civilians. Charleston created a redevelopment authority, and they're turning that military infrastructure into private-market infrastructure. They're expanding their port by converting the old base into commercial port facilities. They're turning it into something that interacts more with the economy. A Bermuda company called Sea Containers Ltd. took a 25-year lease on space for manufacturing and repairing shipping containers. Ten years ago, they were screaming and crying about that base leaving. Now it looks like they're better off that it's gone.

But we have two ports -- Morehead City and Wilmington.

Morehead isn't a...