It is more prudent to save up now to prepare for the rainy days as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted considerable slides in prices of commodities for financial year 2012-2013.

Offering a gloomy glimpse of global economies in the period on its World Economic Outlook, which is set to be released next week, the IMF warned that resources producing countries, Australia including, would at be fault to rely on steady commodities prices.

Most likely, the global lender said, the market would suffer price slumps in the immediate quarters ahead, with the crunch possibly extending into the first half of 2013.

"The weak global economic outlook suggests that commodity prices are unlikely to increase at the pace of the past decade," the IMF said on its initial global economic review and as reported by The Age.

"Commodity prices are forecast to decline somewhat during 2012-13. Sizeable downside risks to global growth also pose risks of further downward adjustment in commodity prices," the financial body said.

Along this line, the IMF has revised its growth forecast for the current year to 3.3 percent, coming from the four percent that the international bank had earlier set in January this year.

For next year, the lender also pushed back its previous growth projection of 4.5 percent to just 3.9 percent, according to The Age.

The downward adjustments have been mostly attributed to the expected cooling down of China's economy, which Beijing has pared down to 7.5 percent growth for this year following the country's consecutive expansions in the past years, at times reaching double-digit spikes.

Its accelerated industrialisation practically in reverse mode, in the near-term at least, China reduced its importation level to 5.3 percent as of March this year, leading to a trade surplus in the first quarter of the current year.

The result for Australia? The country registered a fall of about nine percent on its iron ore shipments in the same period because China remains its biggest market for the minerals, experts said.

The declines was mostly confirmed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which recently reported that Australia's mineral shipments shrunk by 17.5 percent to $14.3 billion in February this year, coming from the $17.3 billion revenues realised from the sector in August last year.

And that trend will only continue, the IMF said, warning too that "high uncertainty and more unpredictability," will characterise the commodities prices movements both in the near-term and the long-term.

It is best for mining-based nations, which obviously count Australia in the forefront, to start "building buffers to address cyclical volatility," which the IMF said should serve at least their cautious approach to the flagged challenges.

Save up and raise taxes, the IMF urged, while the harvested resources were delivering the goods and refrain from unnecessary spending so governments can hopefully dig out some cash by the time the boom is over.

Governments lucky enough to gain solid cash holdings must get involved on domestic investment activities to spur productivity and couple such policy by easing down tax regulations, the IMF report.

Most of all, states must not by lured by sovereign wealth funds as ways to possibly increase the earnings delivered through commodities shipments.

"Changes in public investment expenditures give the strongest output effect, by raising private-sector productivity (for instance, via improvements in education, health and infrastructure), and subsequently by increasing private capital, labour and corporate incomes and consumption," the IMF suggested.