Page "Economic history of Argentina" Paragraph 59

With the opening of the Panama canal in 1914, the importance of the Southern cone economies declined, as investors turned their attention to Asia.

The post-war recovery was short-lived and marked by scarcity of foreign investment.

For all its success, by the 1920s Argentina was not an industrialised country by the standards of Britain, Germany or the United States.

A major hindrance to full industrialisation was the lack of energy sources such as coal or hydro power.

Experiments with oil, discovered in 1907, had poor results.

Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, the first state-owned oil company in Latin America, was founded in 1922 as a public company responsible for 51 % of the oil production ; the remaining 49 % was in private hands.