Declining exports from LDCs
Businesses in the developing countries are exporting more, but making
less money. The global financial crisis caused trade values to drop, but
that was not accompanied by a corresponding decline in trade volumes, finds
ITC’s TradeMap Factsheet: Developing
Country Exports Decline in 2009 .
To better understand this
phenomenon, ITC analyzed the financial crisis’ impact on the least developed
countries (LDCs), small island developing states (SIDS) and land locked
developing countries (LLDCs). The ITC TradeMap Factsheet establishes the
impact of the decline in global trade on developing economy groups’ exports.
The major findings of the document
include:
- There was a sharp decline in the
value of the developing country exports during the first half of 2009, ranging
from -30.8% for SIDS to -49.7% for LLDCs.
- While the decline in trade values
is significant, it has not been accompanied by a corresponding decline in trade
volumes. During the first half of 2009, the volume of exports from LDCs
actually increased, albeit marginally. But the overall value has dropped,
meaning countries are exporting more for less.
The ITC TradeMap Factsheet also
found that among the country groupings, LLDCs, sub-Saharan Africa and LDCs
experienced the sharpest declines in exports during the first two quarters of
2009. In all, they experienced a more than 45% decline.
The document takes a number of criteria into consideration including the composition of the export decline with respect to
changing commodity prices versus trade volumes, the weight of select OECD and
emerging economies in the decline, their significance to future export
development in developing countries, and finally the importance of
intra-regional trade to these developing economy groups.