Desarrollo energético en América Latina y la economía mundial

Professor Abbas Alnasrawi I ENERGY AND THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES rienced a temporary slowdown and an increase in their balance of payments deficits their flexible and diversified economies helped them to adjust to the new situation. The problem for the other group of countries, where haH of the Third World population lives, was far more serious. The seriousness of the problem stems from the fact that their export prices lagged behind the general inflation while their import cost rose sharply. This led to serious deterioration in their terms of trade and caused setbacks in their development prospects. Countries in this group are inherentl,y handicapped in treir ability to adjust to changes in external economic conditions. This phenomenon is due to the narrow range of their exports and to the fact tha t the ability to adjust to change tends to diminish at lower levels of development. The non-OPEC developing countries had to cope with a number of external1y originated changes in the world economy. These changes inc1ude international recession, world-wide inflation, increase in the cost of imported oíl, increases in the cost of imported food and ferti– lizers, and the financing of current account deIicits. The response of the affected countries to these changes had, of necessity, to vary from country to country depending on the level oI development, availability of exports, relatives importance of essential imports, and access to foreign sources of finance. The effects oE the increase in the price oE oil on the economies of OPEe member countries were many and Ear reaching. To begin with, the contribution of the oil sector to the economies of the OPEe mem– ber countries changed very sharply. In 1970 the relative importance oI the oi! sector was close to 30% of the combined GDP of the OPEC member countries. By 1976, the relative importance of the oil sector had increased to over 40%. Total exports which constituted about 30% of their combined GDP in 1970 increased to 44% of the GDP in 1976. By way of comparison, alI oth~r developing countries had ex– ported the equivalent of about 14% of their combined GDP in 1976 9 , It is very cIear from these data that changes in the OPEC economies tended to be more influenced by changes in the industrial economies. This change in the OPEC countries' dependenoy on industrial econo– mies is bound to continue until such time when the process of econo– mic development in OPEC couDtries has succeeded in achieving balan– ced and diversified economies, a proces.s that will lessen their vulne- "Data on GDP were derived !roro U. N., l'earbook 01 National Accounts Statisticl. Data on trade were derived !roro International Monetary Fund, Direction 01 Trade. 37