Three international triangles centered around Asia will drive world trade growth over the comingtwo decades and contribute almost 40% of global trade by 2028, according to a new DHL research
report.Intra-Asia, Asia-Middle East-Africa and Asia-Latin America trade flows will be the key growthlanes, the report found, against the background of converging mega-trends and factors such asglobalisation, labour cost differences and rising incomes in emerging markets. Asia’s share of theglobal logistics market already grew from 34% in 1999 to 46% in 2008, DHL said.
“Asia’s economies, particularly China and to a lesser extent India, will remain the center ofgravity for trade. Within the three identified triangles of trade – intra-Asia, MiddleEast-Africa-Asia and Latin America-Asia – China’s imports of raw materials and exports of variousmanufactured goods such as industrial machinery, textiles and telecommunications and officeequipment dominates trade volumes,” said Herman Ude, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding, Freight, whoparticipated in the APEC CEO Summit 2009 in Singapore last week. “There’s no doubt Asia and theemerging markets will shape the direction and future for economic and commercial expansion.”
Within Intra-Asia trade, DHL expects China to be responsible for some 40%, led by the importof raw materials into China and the exports of textiles, industrial machinery, telecommunicationsand office equipment and foodstuff. Of these, China’s trade with Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kongand Thailand will continue to dominate trade volumes. Chinese exports to India, Indonesia andMalaysia are growing rapidly as well.
While at present, a significant part of the trade within Middle East-Africa-Asia growthtriangle is contributed by oil and gas exports from Middle East to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan andSingapore, growth on these lanes is stagnant. Trade growth within the triangle will come fromChina’s trade with South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE through China’s imports of raw materials – crudeoil, iron – and exports of textiles, apparel, machinery and metal products. India’s contribution togrowth is also sizable: similarly raw materials are key imports (crude oil from the Middle East andcoal from South Africa) while exports are various foodstuff (grain, vegetables) and textilesdestined for the Middle East.
Between 2008 – 2018, Latin America-Asia trade is also expected to grow 4.2%, more than doubleworld trade growth at 2%, registering the fastest growth within the three growth triangles. Keylane growth between China and Latin America is expected at 5% during the same period aided byimports of metals, ores, animal feed, oil seeds mainly to China but also increasingly to India,Indonesia and Thailand, and China’s exports of manufactured goods – electronics, textiles,machinery.
* DHL has opened an Asia Pacific Oil & Energy Centre of Excellence in Singapore staffedby 200 employees to step up its focus on the sector. The logistics firm already has seven similarcentres in Europe, the USA, Middle East and Africa.
