Introduction

This handbook originally developed from a study on Non-Fuel Minerals and Foreign Policy prepared in 1978 for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The study was published in a period when discussion of mineral procurement policies was emerging from specialist groups into a broader forum. The statistical supplement apparently met a need and it was therefore updated and reissued in an expanded form in early 1980. The first edition of this handbook was a further extension of that original work. Its aim was to provide a snapshot of the basic characteristics of the supply and demand of thirty-seven minerals and metals. The second edition was expanded to include data for a further nine commodity groups to give the forty-six covered in this third edition. This time all the data have been updated and revised and the tables extended to include capacities. The handbook is not intended as a substitute for the many excellent statistical publications listed in the Appendix, from which its data are derived, but merely as an introductory guide mainly for the non-specialist. It draws together in a convenient form information that is scattered over a very wide range of primary sources. The numerous statistical caveats, qualifications and footnotes accompanying the original sources of the statistics have been omitted. The tables would otherwise have been swamped in a sea of footnotes.