Oil rally boosts value of Mideast exports

Dubai: High oil prices fuelled a 19 per cent growth in merchandise exports by Middle Eastern countries to $644 billion in 2006, while imports rose 14 per cent to $373 billion last year, according to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) latest World Trade Report.

"The four regions with the highest share of fuels and other mining products in their merchandise exports (the Middle East, Africa, the Commonwealth of Independent States - CIS - and South and Central America) again recorded the strongest annual export rise in 2006," it says.

This is much higher than that of the global trade growth, put at 15 per cent at constant prices, while the real growth is pegged at 8 per cent.

"The combined exports of Africa and the Middle East are estimated to have almost stagnated, while imports, despite their deceleration, continued to expand somewhat faster than the global average," the report says.

The overall picture in 2006 was of trade expanding in real terms, faster than output by a large margin.

The dollar value of world merchandise exports increased by 15 per cent to $11.76 trillion in 2006 while commercial services exports were up by an estimated 11 per cent and reached $2.71 trillion in 2006.

Pascal Lamy, WTO director-general, said in a statement, "The strong performance of 2006 is welcome, particularly the gains made by developing and least-developed countries. But this has to be consolidated. The uncertainties that lie ahead are a warning for us not to lose sight of the need to continue to reform the world economy."

The least-developed countries' exports rose sharply in 2006 due to much larger values of fuels exports and stronger exports of other primary products and manufactured goods.

The 0.9 per cent share for least-developed countries was also a record, the highest level since 1980, the earliest data kept by the WTO.

Developing countries' share of world merchandise exports reached an all time record of 36 per cent.

However, the global trade could slow down this year, WTO cautioned.

"Assuming the basic scenario of global economic GDP growth of nearly 3 per cent, global merchandise trade could slow down to about six per cent in 2007, or 2 percentage points less than in 2006.