“This year may well see a rare occurrence for world commodity markets – a decline in all nine key commodity price indices, says the World Bank’s latest Commodity Markets Outlook, released today. While oil prices have seen the most dramatic decline, the third largest since World War II, other commodities have also been gradually weakening in recent months. And this broad-based weakness is expected to continue throughout 2015, before beginning a modest turn around in 2016. In oil markets, a “perfect storm” of conditions has led to a plunge in prices since mid-2014: growth in unconventional oil production, decline in demand, appreciation of the U.S. dollar, receding geopolitical risks, and a major redirection toward maintaining market share rather than targeting prices by the world’s oil cartel, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil prices have dropped 55 percent in seven months, from the most recent high of $108 per barrel in mid-June 2014 to $47 two days ago. Should the current slide continue, it could surpass the previous records of a 7-month decline of 67 percent, set in 1985/86, and a 75 percent drop in 2008. In addition, the World Bank’s three industrial commodity price indices – energy, metals and minerals, and agricultural raw materials – experienced near identical declines between early 2011 and the end of 2014, of more than 35 percent each, and will continue to contract this year. Prices of precious metals are also expected to decline by 3 percent in 2015, on top of the 12 percent decline seen in 2014. Again, ample supplies, weak demand, and a strengthening U.S. dollar have weighed on prices of these commodities as well.”