Havana, Cuba.- The world commercial scene shows today new dominant tendencies but also continuities, stated today Antonio Romero, Dean of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Havana, at an economic forum.

Prior to the opening of the international meeting The Economy of Latin America and the Caribbean in the face of the new international environment: Main challenges, Romero gave the conference Panorama of Contemporary International Trade, in which he defined nine fundamental trends.

The academic explained that since the second half of the 20th century the volume of world trade grew 1.5 times faster than the Gross Domestic Product and exceeded 2 percent in the 90s, although he highlighted that recently there has been a setback.

Global merchandise trade grew by 4.7 percent in 2017, he said, it is expected that in 2018 it will be at 4.4 percent, and in 2019 only four percent, while the exchange of services registered a marked expansion in 2017, after two years of weak or negative growth.

The expert said trade continues to be highly concentrated from its geographic orientation -both in goods and services-, adding that the 10 countries with the largest participation represent approximately 54 percent, which shows an expression of the enormous asymmetries in that environment, he remarked.