GENEVA: World trade is showing signs of recovery as imports and exports start to pick up in Asia and manufacturing rebounds, but the longer-term trend remains negative, the Dutch CPB research institute said on Wednesday.
The volatile monthly figures show world trade volumes rose 2.5 percent in June over May — the biggest rise since July last year — after falling 1.4 percent in May, the institute said in its latest World Trade Monitor.
However, trade volumes in June were 19 percent below their April 2008 peak after huge falls between November 2008 and January this year, it said.
“Despite the clear rise in June, world trade volume growth is still on a sharp downward trend,” it said.
The CPB institute’s quarterly figures, which give a good indication of a turning point in economic data, show trade in the second quarter of this year only 0.7 percent lower than in the first three months.
That compares with quarter-on-quarter drops of 11.2 percent in the first three months of this year and 7.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.
The second-quarter figures reflected a 5 percent rise in imports in emerging Asian markets and a 12.3 percent jump in Japanese exports, said the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, whose data are used by the European Commission and the World Bank.
Looking at trade over a 12-month period, volumes remain on the downward trend they have held since February, with trade in the year ended June 9.8 percent lower than in the previous 12 months, it said.
That is in line with the World Trade Organization forecast that trade will contract by 10 percent this year, the biggest annual fall since World War Two.
The trade figures also reflected a 2 percent rise in global industrial production — the biggest since the institute started tracking the series in 1991 — after a 1.4 percent rise in May.
Again, following big falls at the turn of the year, June output was 8.5 percent below its March 2008 peak, it said.
On the less volatile quarterly data, industrial production was 2.1 percent higher in the three months ended June than in the first quarter after three successive quarterly falls.
Industrial production in emerging Asian countries, which rose 7.7 percent in the second quarter — the same increase as in Japan, is now at a record level, while US industrial production fell 2.9 percent, it said.
