State and Companies in Argentina: Difficulties in "Privatizing" SIAM during the Last Military Dictatorship

Abstract

In the second half of the seventy decade, the dictatorship decided to privatize a group of enterprises which due to different circumstances had been under the control of the state. This was of SIAM Di Tella case, an emblematic enterprise of Argentina. However, the privatization couldn't take place during those years due to the multiple and crossed pressures imposed by the diverse military sectors enclosed also to different power redoubts. As from 1981, the macroeconomic crisis, the changes in the cabinet and the union pressures, turned infeasible the privatization project. The objective was finally achieved in the middle of the eighties after a process full of hesitations notably extended in the time, during a democratic government opposed to make any progress towards the then so called structural reforms but which undoubtedly had no capacity to promote the productive revitalization of SIAM. Leading enterprises in their respective sectors took over the principal plants of the firm and with the exception of the ex-SIAT disappeared as productive fields in the nineties.