The corona pandemic has put a severe damper on trade all over the world. At least the trade in goods has now recovered.
According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), after the Corona slump in 2020, global trade in goods has climbed to new highs. In the first half of 2021, it exceeded the level from before the pandemic, the WTO reported in Geneva.
The WTO adjusted its world trade forecasts for 2021 and 2022 upwards. In individual areas, for example, the bottleneck in semiconductors or backlogs in ports could affect production, but this will hardly have any influence on the upward trend.
The WTO now estimates that the volume of trade will grow by 10.8 percent for the full year 2021. In March it had assumed a year-on-year increase of 8 percent. For the coming year, the WTO expects a plus of 4.7 percent. In the Corona year 2020, global trade in goods had shrunk by 5.3 percent. According to the WTO, trade in services is still well below the level it was before the pandemic. The gross domestic product is expected to grow by 5.3 (March forecast: 5.1) percent this year, and by 4.1 (3.8) percent in the coming year.
According to the WTO, however, trade growth is very unevenly distributed. The Middle East, South America and Africa lagged behind in terms of export growth, and the Middle East, the successor states of the Soviet Union and Africa in terms of import growth. In addition to the semiconductor bottleneck and traffic jams in ports, risks are the high transport costs. According to the WTO, the greatest risk remains the development of the coronavirus pandemic. The longer many countries have not had a vaccine and can hardly vaccinate people, the greater the risk that dangerous virus variants will develop, said WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
