Double digit export growth predicted for 2004

The Swedish Trade council’s latest market survey, published this September predicts 13 percent volume growth for Swedish exports to the Asia Pacific region for the full 2004.
     But that is not good enough, warns the trade council’s chief economist Mauro Gozzo.
     “It is remarkable that Swedish export to only a very small extent has capitalised on the new Asian boom. In value terms did our exports to Asia Pacific grow by only two percent first half 2004,” writes Gozzo in his report.
     Sweden has done fairly OK in China but that is about it, according to a Swedish newspaper interview with Gozzo after the report was released.
     The Trade council in of the opinion that a couple of Asean countries, for example Malaysia and Singapore, have now returned to economic growth rates on par with those recorded during the last Asia boom, which ended with a bang 2 July 1997.
     It is no secret that much of Swedish business attention to Asia after 1997 has been on China. The negligence to nurture old markets in Asean is now beginning to show in trade statistics.

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