COLOMBIAN ECONOMIC SUCCESS IN THE LAST DECADE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY
Abstract
Colombia has been experiencing a steady growth since the 1950s after the World War Two. With its strong agricultural force in the regional and worldwide economy, it managed to find itself an important global role in export. In this paper I will try to explain its main economic patterns and its regional exceptionality. I will try to focus on the economic expansion in 1990s and its structural and historical reasons.
An Overview of the Contemporary Economy
Colombian economy is the fourth largest of Latin America; the second largest of Central America, the third largest of South America and thirty-first largest of the world. In 2014, it became the fastest growing major
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Before the colonial period the economy was based on agriculture (maize, coca, marijuana, local fruits). During the colonial period it became a source of precious metals, coffee, sugar and tobacco and cheap native labor for the colonists. After the decolonization, Colombia maintained with its coffee and tobacco production for international markets and mining activities. In other words, it continued by being an exporter economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In the postwar period after World War Two Colombia started to transform its economy towards a well-integrated one. Near the ongoing agricultural production, it developed the main complementary institutions of the national economy; the transportation network and labor force. It was a relatively successful integration due to its strong coffee production that made affordable to finance the transformation of the 1950s and
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There was an implicit fall of export goods. Compared to the other Latin American countries, Colombia experienced this period of recession rather in a less destructive manner. This was because of the rapid development of industrial economy and strengthened international trade. The foreign aid (World Bank and direct grants from the US government) had also an important role in this lucky situation: Colombia used its foreign exchange reserves to afford the outcomes of the global recession “(20% in 1982 and 50% in 1983)” , namely the trade and national account imbalances. So it could diminish the expectable social and financial impacts, yet the aggregate production underwent a stressful