Measuring Global Imbalances

Extract

The volume of world trade in goods and services remained some 6 per cent below its pre-crisis peak in the first quarter of 2010, but has rebounded by nearly 10 per cent since the trough reached in the second quarter of 2009. Figure 8 shows the ratio of world trade to world GDP, which plummeted by 3.2 percentage points at the height of the financial crisis. This unparalleled collapse in world trade reflected a decline in import penetration ratios (the ratio of the volume of imports of goods and services to GDP) in all the major economies, with the sharpest falls in several of the EU's new member states, as well as Hong Kong and some oil exporting economies such as Indonesia.