ABSTRACT
The worldwide interest in metal consumption by the developing countries is of very recent origin. Both the unavailability of data and the relative unimportance of the Third World as a metal consumer explained the earlier neglect. After 1973, however, metal demand in the industrialized market economies stagnated, and the growing consumption in the developing countries began to assume much greater significance. Changes in the metal requirements of the Third World have constituted virtually the only recent expansionary element in global demand, providing some hope for the world’s depressed metal-producing industries. The interest in the developing nations’ metal consumption has also been heightened by the realization that in recent times this group of countries has come to account for sizable shares of global demand in major metal markets. Between 1973 and 1987, the developing countries’ share of world consumption rose from 5.1 to 13.5 percent for aluminum, from 5.7 to 13.8 percent for copper, from 8.5 to 15.3 percent for lead, from 2.7 to 8.2 percent for nickel, from 9.0 to 15.0 percent for steel, and from 9.1 to 17.4 percent for zinc (see the statistical appendix to this volume).
