Turnkey Plant Exports

Abstract

The demand for turnkey industrial plant¹ generally has risen rapidly in the last two decades as a growing number of developing countries, without a domestic capital goods base and associated engineering skills, have sought to set up manufacturing industries. The oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have probably led the way, but a large number of others in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia (and now, on a massive scale, China), have sought to import this form of partly embodied and partly disembodied technology. This tendency has been reinforced by the growing desire of many developing countries to retain national ownership of their industry. Turnkey projects are an alternative to direct investment by foreign enterprises, yet they retain the benefit of transferring modern production technology and equipment.