Raw materials resources

Mineral resources continue to play an essential role in the world economy: industrial economies depend on the availability of sources of energy and metals; the wealth of some countries is liable to fluctuate in response to variations over time in the price of the resources extracted. Predictions made early in the 1970s of exhaustion of resources of important minerals, e.g. lead and zinc, have proved to be mistaken, and from the viewpoint of the late–1980s it seems likely that total world consumption of mineral resources will continue to rise. A continuation is expected of the trend for an increased proportion of ores being converted into end–products in the country of extraction. In the highly industrialized countries the importance of mineral resources will tend to decrease relative to total manufactured goods and services, and the demand for imported minerals will decrease as other minerals are substituted and more metals are recycled. Developing countries which export raw minerals will be adversely affected because the prices of the minerals that they sell will rise more slowly than the prices for manufactured goods that they import.