The World Trade Organisation says the volume of trade globally should increase by 2.6 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025.“World merchandise trade volume is expected to grow 2.6% in 2024 and 3.3% in 2025 as demand for traded goods rebounds following a contraction in 2023,” WTO said.
Also, WTO said high energy prices and inflation continued to weigh heavily on demand for manufactured goods, resulting in a 1.2 percent decline in world merchandise trade volume for 2023. “World trade remained well above its pre-pandemic level throughout 2023. By the fourth quarter it was nearly unchanged compared to the same period in 2022 and had only risen slightly compared to the same period in 2021 .”The report further estimates global gross domestic product growth will remain mostly stable over the next two years at 2.6 percent in 2024 and 2.7 percent in 2025, after slowing to 2.7 percent in 2023 from 3.1 percent in 2022.