ABSTRACT
The process of industrial expansion in Latin America has been engineered through a distinctive institutional structure. This structure has been referred to as ‘the triple alliance’ – an alliance between state firms, national private enterprises and Multinational Corporations. State firms have thus developed in two very distinct sectors of Latin American industrial economies. On the one hand, they have been established in the extractive industries and in the further processing and refining of the minerals concerned. On the other hand, state firms have developed in the basic heavy industrial sectors of the more advanced Latin American economies - producing oil and steel, petrochemical feed-stocks, aluminium and electricity for a wide range of manufacturing consumers. One study of Argentine industry in the late 1970s concluded that: There is little evidence of increased foreign ownership in manufacturing industry, largely because Argentina has been seen as an uncertain and shrinking market.
