After the growth of +2.7% recorded in 2022, this year the Growth in world trade will mark a more contained and equal to +1.7%. This is foreseen by the World Trade Organization signaling that growth will continue to be in 2023 below average despite slight positive update of last year's world gross domestic product projections autumn (in October the estimate for 2023 was of a growth of +1,0%). The WTO has specified that the growth forecast lower than expected in 2023 is also a consequence of the Significant collapse recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022: if in the First three quarters of last year, in fact, year-on-year growth year of the volume of world trade had been on average of +4.2%, In the last quarter of 2022 the increase fell to +2.4%. In its new Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report, the WTO has specified that if the final data of +2.7% of last year turned out lower than the growth of +3.5% expected Last October for the whole of 2022, however, it was close to the previous estimate of +3.0% formulated a year ago which was based on simulations to assess the economic impact of war Russia-Ukraine.

The new WTO report makes clear that the new forecast of growth of +1.7% in 2023, compared to the previous estimate of +1.0% in October, also based on the key factor the easing of controls in China due to the Covid-19 pandemic whereas it is expected to trigger pent-up demand from Chinese consumers, and consequently stimulate international trade.

"Trade - commented the Director-General of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala - continues to be a resilient force of the world economy, but in 2023 it will remain under pressure of external factors. This - he underlined - makes it even more it is important for governments to avoid fragmentation of trade and refrain from introducing barriers to trade. Investing in multilateral cooperation on trade, as members have done of the WTO at our twelfth ministerial conference of the last June - it has highlighted - would strengthen the economic growth and people's standard of living in the long term'.

As for 2024, while specifying that the estimate is more uncertain than usual due to the presence of considerable risks of Downside, including geopolitical tensions, shock food supply and the possibility of Unforeseen consequences linked to monetary tightening, currently the WTO believes that next year the growth of world trade should rise to +3.2% (with GDP up +2.6%).