Overview

This book is the first cross-country analysis of resource-based industrialization (RBI), a controversial industrialization strategy much favoured by developing countries in the 1970's. It looks at the expectations and the actual experience of RBI in eight oil-exporting countries - Bahrain, Cameroon, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela - which among them cover a broad range of developing-country size and efficiency constraints. The author shows that these countries underestimated the risks associated with RB's large capital-intensive projects. Their macro-economic policy seldom yielded the sustained domestic demand and export competitiveness that RBI needs to reach full capacity; state firms lacked the necessary autonomy and efficiency, unless partnered by an experienced multinational. The larger countries squandered their size advantage by pursuing over-ambitious RBI strategies. Many RBI plants were poorly implemented and became uncompetitive when prices fell below forecast levels. Despite this sobering picture, however, and the caution that even well-implemented RBI may not suceed, given its long gestation period and link to volatile energy markets, RBI does have considerable long-term potential provided the conditions of financial restructuing and macro- and micro-economic efficiency are met first. Scholars and students in development economics, business studies (major projects), planning, industrial geography and geography of developing countries will be interested in this book, as will advisers and consutants in and to developing-country governments and international institutions.

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9780198232995

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