The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday listed the key features of the world trade development in 2004 when world merchandise exports grew at a record pace of 9 percent.

"Strong economic growth and rapid trade expansion were present in all regions in 2004," economists of the world trade body said in the annual international trade statistics.

Other features include the following:

Strong economic growth and rapid trade expansion were present in all regions in 2004.

The expansion of merchandise trade continued to exceed merchandise output growth by a large margin. The excess of trade over output growth was again particularly large for manufactures.

The sharp rise in prices and traded volumes of many primary commodities has often been a major factor explaining the relative strength of regions and product groups in international trade flows.The most prominent illustration of this is, of course, export growth of net oil exporters. The sharp increase in net oil imports of China, the United States and India since 2000 had been a major factor behind the expansion of oil trade and the increase in oil prices.

Sharp price increases for iron and steel, ores, nonferrous metals and fuels combined with a further depreciation of the US dollar vis-a-vis the currencies of major European traders led to a double-digit price increase for world merchandise trade, the largest annual increase since 1995. These four product groups (iron and steel, ores, nonferrous metals and fuels) recorded export growth in excess of 30 percent in 2004. Product groups with the weakest nominal growth in 2004 included agricultural products, textiles and clothing.

Transportation services expanded by 23 percent to 500 billion dollars, the fastest increase among all services categories. The expansion was boosted by rising transportation costs and a strong increase in the volume of merchandise trade.

Oil exporting regions (the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Middle East and Africa) increased their merchandise exports much faster than the global average. North America and Europe are the two regions whose merchandise export and import growth remained below the global average growth in 2004.

The merchandise exports of least-developed countries (LDCs) are estimated to have increased by one third to 62 billion US dollars in 2004. Higher commodity prices and an increase in the volume of crude oil contributed to this strong performance. Non-oil exporting LDCs recorded lower than average export growth for the group.

The emergence of China as a major import and export market for goods and services continued unabated in 2004. The share of China in the exports and imports of many countries has doubled between 2000 and 2004. By 2004, China had become the world's third largest merchandise trader.

Source: Xinhua