International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. This marked the initiation of Salazar's more outward-looking economic policy. Portuguese foreign trade increased by 52 per cent in exports and 40 per cent in imports. The economic growth and levels of capital formation from 1960 to 1973 were characterized by an unparalleled robust annual growth rates of GDP (6.9 per cent), industrial production (9 per cent), private consumption (6.5 per cent) and gross fixed capital formation (7.8 per cent). In 1960, at the initiation of Salazar's more outward-looking economic policy, Portugal's per capita GDP was only 38 percent of the European Community (EC-12) average; by the end of the Salazar period, in 1968, it had risen to 48 percent; and in 1973, under the leadership of Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's per capita GDP had reached 56.4 percent of the EC-12 average. On a long term analysis, after a long period of economic divergence before 1914, and a period of chaos during the First Republic, the Portuguese economy recovered slightly until 1950, entering thereafter on a path of strong economic convergence with the wealthiest economies of Western Europe, until the Carnation Revolution in April 1974. Portuguese economic growth in the period 1960 to 1973 under the Estado Novo regime (and even with the effects of an expensive war effort in African territories against independence guerrilla groups), created an opportunity for real integration with the developed economies of Western Europe. Through emigration, trade, tourism and foreign investment, individuals and firms changed their patterns of production and consumption, bringing about a structural transformation. Simultaneously, the increasing complexity of a growing economy raised new technical and organizational challenges, stimulating the formation of modern professional and management teams. Salazar incapacitated When Salazar was incapacitated in an accident in 1968, the Council of State, a high-level advisory body created by the Constitution of 1933, chose Marcello Caetano to succeed him. Caetano (1968–74), though a Salazar protégé, tried to modernize and liberalize the old Salazar system. He was opposed, however, by a group widely referred to as "the bunker," the old Salazarists. These included the country's president, Admiral Américo Tomás, the senior officers of the armed forces, and the heads of some of the country's largest financial groups. The bunker was powerful enough that any fundamental change would certainly have led to Caetano's immediate overthrow. As Caetano promised reform but fell into indecision, the sense began to grow among