The overall expectation for trade in most large economies – the US, the European Union, Japan and even China – is for little growth or even declining volumes. The next year is likely to look very different to last year and the next three years very different to the last three years. Southeast Asia and South Asia are expected to show much stronger performance than Northeast Asia. This article discusses 2022 and 2023 import and export performance across Northeast, Southeast and South Asia.
Northeast, Southeast and South Asia as a combined region account for about one third of global economic output. The dominant economies within the region are China, Japan, Korea, India and Indonesia. Figure 1 (below) gives an indication of the relative size of each of the world’s economies for 2019 (but 2021 figures look fairly similar).
Figure 2 and Figure 3 provide an overview of expected and forecast growth in import and export volume for economies across the region. The size of the bubble denotes the relative size of each of the economies in terms of overall output.
Based on preliminary estimates for 2022 prepared by IMF in October, most of the economies in the region saw increases in export and import volumes, although some markets did not, specifically Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Hong Kong. Korea and Japan produced reasonably strong export and import growth, while China did not. An update to these estimates is expected later this month.
For 2023 the expectation is that countries in Southeast Asia (specifically Vietnam, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia) and Pakistan will perform strongly on the export side, while India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines will do well on the import side. Chinese export and import performance is expected to be moderate, but this will depend very much on how quickly the country reaches normality now that things are opening up.
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