• Historian Agnus – Maddison in the World Trade Report, 2013 states that since the mid-1800s, the world’s population has grown roughly 6 times, world production has grown 60 times, and world trade has grown over 140 times.
• According to this report, phenomenal reduction in transport and communication costs is the driving force behind today’s global trading system on such a huge scale.
• The report also says that strong relations between nations have also boosted world trade.
• In the last 30 years, world merchandise and commercial services trade have increased by about 7 percent per year on average.
• Between 1980 and 2011, developing economies could raise their share in world exports from 34% to 47% and their share in world imports from 29% to 42%. Asia is playing an increasing role in world trade.
• Since decades the world trade has grown nearly twice as compared to world production. This clearly states that world trade is rising quite fast. This also reflects that international supply chains and logistics are playing a very important role in delivering goods across the world at a much faster rate.

Average annual growth of world trade during different time periods