APEC economy, trade in fair growth: report

Despite great uncertainty in the global economy, the 21-member APEC bloc registered fair enough growth in trade and economy, according to a report released Friday.

Though down from the 12.1-percent growth in December of 2011 to a moderate 4.6-percent growth in May 2012 in nominal U.S. dollar value of merchandise trade for APEC member economies, it was still enough for the bloc as a whole to remain atop the development heap by comparison with other economies in the world, the report said.

The rest of the world contracted by 5.6 percent in nominal value of merchandise trade in May this year, according to the report, which was produced by the APEC Policy Support Unit, an independent APEC research team that supplies regular economy and trade analysis based on data collected from across the Asia-Pacific region.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted a slight increase on growth for APEC, with 4.2 percent of growth in 2012 as against 4.1 percent of growth last year. The Washington-based institution forecast a 4.5-percent growth for APEC in 2013, well ahead of global development trend.

"Though trade performance varied across the region in the first half of 2012, due to weak global demand and sharp falls in commodity prices, APEC members' economic growth has been fairly robust and resilient," said unit director Denis Hew.

The unit director described the foreign direct investment in the Asia-Pacific region as encouraging thanks to the fact that Asia-Pacific had accounted for nearly half of the growth of global FDI inflows in 2011.

But Hew warned that APEC members' economic growth and their trade and investment flows could be significantly affected by downside risks related to the external environment even though the bloc's economic activity is expected to remain relatively robust in the medium term.

The policy support unit also proposed measures that might help mitigate the risks. The proposed measures include maintaining free and open markets, renewing the pledge to withdraw existing restrictive measures and resisting new protectionist measures to bolster the regional as well as the global economic recovery.

"APEC should also continue to monitor trade and investment measures by member economies," Hew added.