Almost all the forecasters agree that their prospects have changed since last year. Only UNCTAD finds that what has occurred does not alter its expectations for developing countries.

The forecasts published in 1986 continue last year's move towards offering much more breakdown of 'developing countries' into different groupings, not only by area, but by type of export, type of borrowing, income, etc.

As these do not normally provide specific information about individual countries it is not clear that showing, for example,
how badly oil exporters are hit by falls in the oil price, is as valuable as more analysis on how countries react to extreme changes would be.

The forecasters also avoid any suggestion that they are forecasting. It is noteworthy that five of the forecasters give details on changes in per capita GDP (IMF, World Bank, UN, UNCTAD, IDB) and note the falls.