$ 1953 billion annual average of trade in the past five years

Media In – Abu Dhabi 4 April 2018 WAM

The average annual value of Arab merchandise trade jumped from $ 497 billion during the first five years of the third millennium to $ 1953 billion over the last five years, more than double the growth of world merchandise trade over the same period.
The Arab Organization for Investment Guarantee and Export Credit (Daman), based in Kuwait, confirmed that there were huge changes in Arab foreign trade during the first years of the third millennium in terms of the total volume of trade in both exports and imports as well as in geographical destinations, but with minor changes in the commodity distribution of the structure of exports and imports .
The organization said in its quarterly publication that the jump resulted in the increase of the share of the countries of the region in the world commodity trade from 3 to 5% between the two periods .. This was attributed to the rise in export prices of Arab products, especially fuel in return for the increase in quantities of Arab commodity imports.
The report pointed out that the volume of Arab commodity trade in terms of value increased by more than 4.5 times from the average of $ 27.4 billion to an average of $ 126.5 billion during the same period. However, its share of the total foreign trade of Arab countries increased only slightly from 11 to 13% , With the increase of the contribution of the GCC countries in intra-Arab trade between 59% and 65% during the comparison period.