ABSTRACT
The Peronist government began to take a series of measures aimed at stimulating the development of basic industry and machinery and equipment (assuming the diagnoses outlined by ECLAC) when the external restriction appeared at the beginning of the 1950s. These proposals were expressed in the second Five-Year Plan and in the promotion of the establishment of foreign firms, even though the government continued to prioritise, to sustain a “balanced” development, the encouragement of agricultural activities, the only suppliers of foreign exchange in those circumstances. With the fall of the government, Raúl Prebisch and ECLAC successfully discussed the problem of the terms of trade and the limits of industrialization centered on light industries. These proposals promoted an important exchange of ideas, although the political dimension often seemed to obscure the theoretical and technical aspects that were their substratum. Arturo Frondizi’s government at the end of the 1950s soon manifested its decision to unambiguously attract foreign capital, deepening the measures that Peronism and Prebisch had outlined or tried to apply. The local developmentalist strategy placed emphasis on the oil area with the purpose of reducing foreign exchange expenditure in that area, in the production of machinery and in the chemical industry.
