This article discusses some of the implications of the market-oriented reforms and the rapid pace of globalisation of the world economy in the 1990s for industrial technological capability building in Latin America. On the one hand, such changes have permitted much better macroeconomic management, allowing governments to curb inflation, and to deal with recurrent fiscal and balance of payments imbalances. These reforms and the process of globalization have also induced the inception of a modern sector of production which has managed to incorporate many new computer-based production organisation technologies and to attain rapid progress in the use of ICTs. New sectors of economic activity have emerged in the economy, many of which now lead in terms of international competitiveness.