The trade growth of the Philippines and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to further slowdown in 2013, as the economic uncertainty in the United States

and in the European Union continues to affect the region and raise fear of the re-emergence of the global crisis, the United Nations warned on Thursday.

The new UN report entitled Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report (Aptir) said that exports by the Asia-Pacific region continued to grow at about 4 percent during the first half of 2012, while at the global level exports contracted from a 5-percent growth rate to -1 percent during the same period.

Imports also started to contract toward mid-2012, although growing consumption has kept the region importing at a faster rate on average compared with the rest of the world.

However, the report noted that after the initial promising signals of a recovery in 2010, exports from Asia-Pacific are again facing a risk of deceleration.

“The intensified pressure in the euro zone and the rising threat from a slowdown in the emerging economies has raised the fear of a re-emergence of the global crisis,” it stated.

Aptir revealed that one threat derives from the intensified direct pressures in the euro zone and another is linked to the economic crisis passing through China to the rest of the region.

“The Chinese economic slowdown has opened the door to the fear of a global crisis re-emergence,” the report added.

Chinese economy slowdown
It continued that the slowdown of the Chinese economy is placing pressure on the Asia-Pacific’s exports to the Chinese market and affecting the region’s intraregional exports in goods.

China is currently the largest individual export market for the rest of the region. The country accounted for about 16 percent of exports by the rest of Asia-Pacific region in 2011.

“The region’s exports of raw materials and intermediate goods, such as rubber products, electronics, plastics and chemicals, will potentially suffer from both a softening of demand in China and from weak global markets,” Aptir further said.

As a result, the report said that the trade growth in the region is not expected to quickly recover in 2013 after the setbacks experienced in 2011 and 2012. Amid the rising uncertainties within and outside the region, exports and imports growth of Asia-Pacific economies is projected to grow more slowly in 2012.

It mentioned that the growth of exports in developing Asia-Pacific is expected to drop from 6.5 percent in 2011 to 2 percent in 2012, while import growth is projected to fall from 9 percent to 3 percent during the same period.

For 2013, exports is projected to further weaken in the Philippines, India, and Turkey, while import growth is expected to remain stalled during 2013 in Australia and Japan (among the Asian developed countries) and in Indonesia and the Philippines (among the developing countries of the region).

Philippine exports are expected to grow at 10.1 percent in 2012 and may slowdown to 4.3 percent in 2013, while imports is seen to grow at 4.3 percent and 2.3 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively. United Nations said that the Aptir is a recurrent publication prepared by the Trade and Investment Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

It provides information on and independent analyses of regional trends and developments in trade and investment; emerging issues in trade, investment and trade facilitation policies and impacts of these policies on countries’ abilities to meet the challenges of achieving inclusive and sustainable development.