ABSTRACT
In response to the debt crisis and the increased globalization of real and financial markets, developing countries are promoting important structural changes in their economies. Inward-oriented development models are rapidly being replaced by ambitious outward-oriented growth models. Decades of excessive government intervention in the economy and excessive regulation and protectionism are also ending through the implementation of significant plans for free trade and economic integration, privatization of state enterprises, strengthening of local market activity, and less bureaucratism. Thus, local markets and institutions are undergoing important modernization changes. Underlying these changes are two basic facts needed to promote economic development in the aftermath of the debt crisis: the need to become competitive at the international level in order to participate in and benefit from expected global changes in trade and finance, and the need for increasing local savings and finding alternative ways to foreign debt financing to mobilize greater local and international resources for investments.
