Oil prices at current levels would wipe a percentage point off expected growth rates in developing countries next year, and the impact could be made worse by moves towards lower energy taxes in rich countries, World Bank officials said on Thursday.

The issue of higher oil prices is one of two - the other being the weakness of the euro - that threaten to dominate the coming week's meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague. Yet amid the controversy so far, little attention has been paid to plight of developing country oil importers.

The oil price rise - it is now roughly 50 per cent above the average price from 1990-98 - is a long way from the trebling that occurred during the first oil shock of the 1970s and the doubling of the second oil shock.

The importance of oil to the world economy is also about three quarters of what it was during the 1970s. But this is largely because the energy intensity of industrialised countries - the energy used per unit of gross domestic product - has dropped sharply.

In most developing countries, with the exception of the so-called transition economies of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, which used energy very inefficiently, it is little changed. In Africa and the Middle East, energy intensity has risen slightly.

Uri Dadush, the World Bank's director of economic policy and prospects, said yesterday that developing countries would see GDP reduced by 1 per cent next year if oil prices remained at some $35 a barrel - equivalent to about $40bn. This is compared with the bank's baseline forecast of $25 a barrel. The world's 30 or more oil exporting countries would meanwhile gain an enormous 6 per cent of GDP, or $135bn.

The ability of oil-importing developing countries to cope with such shocks is also limited by their isolation from international financial markets. In theory, countries faced with rising import prices and falling export prices - and believing the phenomenon to be temporary - could choose to borrow from abroad until prices return to more normal levels.

However, developing country commodity exporters generally have limited access to external capital markets, and in any case have no guarantee the price movements will be shortlived.

Mr Dadush said efforts to lower energy taxes in rich countries could encourage consumption and lead in the short-term to higher oil prices, further damaging poorer countries.

The IMF's world economic outlook, published earlier this week, also noted that poor countries, particularly those dependent on non-oil commodity exports, have been hardest hit by the rise in global oil costs.

The effect has been compounded by the sharp falls in many agricultural and metal prices in recent years. Developing countries such as coffee-exporting Burundi and cotton-producing Mali, which import oil, have suffered rapidly worsening terms of trade - the ratio of export to import prices.

Nearly 30 countries have seen the export-import price ratio fall by over 10 per cent in the past three years. All but two are low-income countries, according to World Bank classification; over half are in sub-Saharan Africa. The fund said that such countries might have to cut back on government spending.