Unanticipated Economic Disturbances, External and Internal Because
most developing countries have open economies dependent on the vicissitudes
of international trade, aid, “hot” speculative capital inflows and private
foreign investment,it becomes exceedingly difficult for them to engage in
even short-term forecasting, let alone long-range planning. The oil price increases
of the 1970s caused havoc in most development plans. But the energy
crisis was only an extreme case of a general tendency for economic factors
over which most governments in the developing world have little control to
determine the success or failure of their development policies.