Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Growth of Manufacturing within Argentina's
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 1900-1955
(Based on 1935-1939 price weights)
Year GDP in millions of pesos Manufacturing
1900 2,226 244.9
1905 3,248 367.0
1910 4,196 549.7
1915 4,668 485.5
1920 5,424 634.6
1925 6,938 992.1
1930 8,206 1,198.0
1935 8,976 1,319.5
1940 10,257 1,620.6
1945 11,642 2,037.4
1950 14,709 2,662.3
1955 16,532 2,942.7
Source: Randall, Laura.
AnEconomicHistoryofArgentinaintheTwentiethCentury
(New York: Columbia University Press,1978), pp. 2-3.
not to lose the British market for agricultural exports. Great Britain had
responded to the depression by giving preference to trade within the
British Commonwealth of Nations and importing wheat and meat from
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia even though the Argentine alterna-
tives were lower priced and of higher quality. The British policy greatly
affected Argentina's exports, so President Justo promptly dispatched
Julio Roca, Jr., son of the late president, to draw up a new agreement
with Great Britain. The Roca-Runciman Treaty preserved British mar-
kets for Argentine exports in exchange for Argentina's promise to give
preference to British manufactured imports and to protect British com-
panies in the railway and meatpacking industries. In the final analy-
sis, Great Britain was declining in importance to Argentine economic
health, and the treaty turned out to be more rhetorical than effective,
but it did serve to help the eventual recovery of Argentina's economy
from the shock of the Great Depression. Exports soon returned to and
then grew beyond levels of the late 1920s.
