Brazilian industrial restructuring in the 90s. An interpretation

ABSTRACT The Brazilian industry has been deeply changed during the nineties although it is not easy to have a synthetic and encompassing view of the transformation occurred. ln order to have such a view one has to take into account the heavy influence of the years of high inflation (until mid 1994). Stabilization and overvaluation (of the real) in the years following the launching of the Real Plan were another decisive influence. The article argues that submitted to this set of conditioning events, industry in Brazil went through a (limited) catch up during the nineties. It also tries to show how progress has been mainly concentrated at the plane level - both in multinational and in domestic industrial firms.