World economic growth remains generally sluggish and has been at its weakest in manufacturing, as opposed to the services sector. Uncertainties over the future of the US recovery and slow growth in Europe are keeping demands for key industrial raw materials relatively depressed. In many of the newer and heavily-indebted industrial countries,commodity consumption has been squeezed, as a result of official austerity programmes. Developing states have had to maximize commodity exports in order to keep up their foreign exchange earnings and offset the decline in unit commodity prices. This, in turn, has aggravated over-supply problems. It's true of Chile in the copper market, as it is of Brazil in soybeans or Malaysia in palm oil.