The 2018 Survey, titled “Global Trade – Securing Future Growth” is now available via the ICC’s website and the following link https://iccwbo.org/publication/global-trade-securing-future-growth/
The link will take you to the ICC website where you will be required to complete a short registration form. Upon submission of the form, you will receive an email with a link to download the survey document. The link is good for one download.
As usual, the publication includes annual statistics provided by SWIFT (for 1 January to 31 December 2017). Highlights of these statistics are:
MT700’s issued in 2017 was 4,247,185 which gave an average of 353,932 per month.
For all regions, the breakdown in forms of availability for a documentary credit was:
Negotiation 73%
Payment 11%
Deferred Payment 9%
Acceptance 7%
Overall, trade finance volume fell by 2.35% in 2017, but this was 50% of the fall seen for 2016 (4.72%).
Category 7 messages fell 1.56% and category 4 by 5.3%.
The average value of a documentary credit rose to USD537k from USD463k in 2016.
Banks in Asia, unsurprisingly, issued 73.8% of the MT700’s and received 77.2% of the annual volume.
Banks in Bangladesh issued the largest number of MT700’s and banks in China received the highest number.