According to the World Trade Organisation, sluggish economies and global conflicts are taking their toll on world commerce. The organisation has slashed its trade growth outlook for 2015. WTO chief Roberto Azevedo says that it is important that you have certain elements present in the global economy, including stability and predictability for trade growth and those things are absent right now. He says that with economies around the world still struggling to fully recover from the 2008 financial crisis, and with conflicts flaring in places like Ukraine and the Middle East, global trade is expanding far more slowly than anticipated a year ago. He says that Ebola outbreak in West Africa, unusually harsh winter weather in the United States and collapsing world oil prices are also taking their toll, as are strong exchange rate fluctuations and all of these things have effects, sometimes destabilising effects.
The WTO chief says that preliminary estimates showed global trade had expanded just 2.8 percent last year and was expected to swell only 3.3 percent this year. The WTO was singing a different tune a year ago. In April last year, the organization had forecast that trade would expand 4.6 percent in 2014 and 5.8 percent this year, but it downgraded those predictions in September to 3.1 percent and 4 percent, respectively before slashing them further. Azevedo says that trade growth has been disappointing in recent years largely due to prolonged sluggish growth in gross domestic products following the financial crisis. Looking forward, the World Trade Organisation expects trade to continue its slow recovery, but with economic growth still fragile and continued geopolitical tensions, this trend could easily be undermined. The last year was the third consecutive year in which the world trade grew less than three percent.
As a matter of fact, trade growth averaged just 2.4 percent between 2012 and 2014 — the slowest rate on record for a three-year period when trade was expanding. Looking at Pakistan, the picture of economy is promising as well as grim too. If the government goes ahead with its plans, there is no doubt that the nation will take a leap of progress in the comity of the nations. However, if the government fails to implement any of the economic plans, such as Pak-China economic corridor and development project, it will be unfortunate state for the government and the people as well. The world trade growth is expected to pick up in 2016 with an expansion of 4 percent, and there will be a great chance for Pakistan to bag its share of economic progress.