International trade in goods of G20 countries fell during the third quarter of 2022 for the first time in two years, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said today in a statement quoted by Lusa.
The international organisation reports an overall drop of 1.3 per cent in goods exports and 1.1 per cent in imports compared to the second quarter, which it attributes in part to declining demand and falling prices for many commodities.
The fall in exports is slightly larger in the European Union (EU) as a whole, with 1.5% less foreign sales and a 0.7% rise in imports.
The United Kingdom, with a growth of 0.8%, and France, with 1%, were spared in the fall of exports in Europe.
On the Asian continent, only China and Indonesia managed to increase exports (by 0.7% and 0.5% respectively), while countries like Japan and South Korea followed the downward trend of the G20.
In the Americas, Mexico and the United States recorded even larger increases (2.6% and 1.7%) compared to the previous quarter.
Overall, this decline means $60,600 million (€58,782 million) less in merchandise exports compared to Q2 2022 in the G20 as a whole, $27,600 million in the EU alone.
“These latest developments in merchandise trade deserve to be closely monitored as the global economy faces multiple headwinds, notably tighter monetary policy, lower commodity prices and a slowdown in demand,” said OECD statistics director Paul Schreyer.
On the other hand, growth in trade in services slowed down in the G20: exports rose by 0.3% and imports by 1.7%, less than in the previous quarter (1.3% and 2.3% respectively).
This slowdown trend was particularly pronounced in France, which recorded the first decline in exports (-1.6%) since the second quarter of 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
