ABSTRACT
The real crisis of the import-substitution industrialization strategy was felt when it became clear that continual growth would be dependent upon expansion of the domestic market, and that such expansion implied a far-reaching redistribution of wealth and power. The trend to economic integration in the early 1960s was inspired in part by fear of saturation of domestic markets for industrial output. The 1990s have seen a new wave of interest in economic integration, but its promotion and underlying motives derive from quarters quite different from those that gave rise to the earlier phase. The impetus for the creation of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was the need to present a common front and enhance government bargaining power vis-a-vis producer companies. The OPEC countries had established, with the collaboration of the major companies, a means of controlling production, and the fourfold rise in oil prices of 1973-1974 was maintained thereafter.
