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-trade across primary products and manufactures and across imports and exports of manufactures by developing countries are useful, the basic issue is really about movements in the terms-of-trade faced by developing countries that trade mostly with developed countries. This article conducts an exercise in that direction and reports trends in commodity (net barter) terms-of-trade of developing countries for about the past thirty years since 1970. The trends are reported for individual developing countries that have usable data and also for the entire group of nonoil developing countries and the group of industrial countries.

Rami (2002) reports trends in commodity net barter terms of trade for individual developing countries as well as the groups of nonoil developing nations and industrial countries since 1970. While there are some cases of positive trends, the overall scenario is of sizable negative trends for most developing countries over the thirty-year period 1970 to 1999. There is, however, some improvement between 1980 and 1999. Seven additional points are noted. First, the observed trends are perhaps largely due to a sizable fall in nonoil commodity prices and a substantial increase in prices of manufactures imported by developing countries from developed countries relative to the prices of the developing countries’ exports of manufactures. Second, the reported trends are broadly consistent with the original and later versions of Prebisch-Singer hypotheses. Third, although it is difficult to relate such trends to any historical event over the period, oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 probably raised developing countries’ import prices in the 1970s and the 1980s, but the opposite shock of the mid-1980s may have offset most of that increase. Fourth, despite the predominance of negative trends over the thirty-year period that was marked by a large increase in developing countries’ exports of manufactures, a simple test indicates that such an increase is likely to improve their terms-of-trade, implying that the trends would probably have been worse without the expansion of exports of manufactures. Fifth, although such trend estimates are useful, some caveats may be kept in view while interpreting these. Sixth, the extension by Singer (1975) of the original Prebisch-Singer hypothesis can be broadened to include the proposition that developing countries’ disadvantage in trade in services might be at least as much as that for the trade in manufactures. Lastly, Singer’s (1975) discussion suggests that technology is a primary vehicle for reducing developing countries’ disadvantage in international exchange and that a sizable international organization to generate and disseminate technology that is useful and appropriate for developing countries might be an important step toward mitigating that disadvantage.

In conclusion, given the recent global financial crisis that has mainly made an impact the North, and a primary commodity price boom since 2005 in raw materials and agricultural goods should see a convergence, although this is likely to be small, and require the less developed countries to be able to sell their surplus, if any exists after food shortages and government restrictions to ensure food securities. The world price in food change should obviously shift the terms of trade for the less developed countries but it will depend on the international demand for these goods as to how much, if at all, the South co