ABSTRACT
The less developed countries governments have been curiously uncomplaining about the price of oil-at least in public. Sharply increased petroleum prices have an immediate and negative impact upon the account of oil-importing countries. Oil imports could be reduced through import quotas and, over a longer period, through conservation, more energy-efficient investments, shifts toward nonenergy-intensive production, and so forth. Argentina's declining growth rate to approximately zero from 1974 to 1977 would normally have made adjustment difficult, but Argentina is an oil producer, and its petroleum imports are a relatively small part of its total imports. Oil price increases have adversely affected non-oil-exporting less developed countries, and it could be expected that they would suffer similar effects if general price increases of primary products were enforced through New International Economic Order. Brazil faces a petroleum problem, but that problem has not affected the country as much as adverse adjustments to its own economic growth strategy begun before 1973.
