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UNCTAD Press Conference: Trade and Development Report 2026 - 09 October 2026
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Press Conferences | UNCTAD
UNCTAD Press Conference: Trade and Development Report 2026 - 09 October 2026
DESCRIPTION
STORY: UNCTAD / TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2026
TRT: 3:14
SOURCE: UNCTAD / UNTV CH
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 09 OCTOBER 2026, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
WEBSITE: https://unctad.org/tdr2026
SHOTLIST
1. Wide shot, Palais des Nations
2. Wide shot, briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): Global growth is projected to reach 2.6 percent this year, down from 2.9% last year, while trade is expected to span by about 4% in real terms. However, gains are extremely concentrated and energy shocks and financial stability continue to put pressure on developing economies. In the context of shrinking official development assistance.
4. Medium Shot, desk area
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): Governments are no longer looking at trade, investment, technology and critical resources only through the lens of economic growth. They are also considering issues of security and geopolitical power. Countries are using tariffs and investment rules to secure supply chains, protects strategic technologies and builds domestic capacity. For major economies this is part of an increasing economic security. For smaller and developing economies it can look very different.
6. Close up, camera man
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): AI is becoming a major source of growth in trade and in and investment. It is driving the demand for chips, servers, data infrastructure, advanced services and critical minerals. But the gains again are highly concentrated.
8. Medium shot, behind speakers
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): For example, Africa mines most of the world's cobalt, which is a strategic mineral at the intersection of technology, energy and geopolitics. 73% of that mineral is held by just one country. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, but less that 1% of value of the global green supply chain stays in Africa.
10. Medium shot, camera man
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): Asian economies have shown remarkable resilience and in many cases, a strong economic growth despite a difficult global environment. They are adapting quickly to changes in technology, trade and investment. They are deepening regional supply chains, attracting investment and diversifying their economy.
12. Close up, behind speakers
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Anastasia Nesvetailova Head of the Macroeconomic and Development Policies Branch UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD): Development has to be built deliberately and that there is now a real window to do this. Rising economies of the global South, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, as well as others are embarking on exactly these endeavors through their sectoral strategies, trade diversification, and regional initiatives.
14. Medium shot, press conference
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Pedro Manuel Moreno, Acting Secretary-General UN Trade and development (UNCTAD): The message from UNCTAD is clear the Global South is not simply responding to this new global economy. It is also increasingly saving it.
16. Medium shot, press conference room
STORYLINE
Global trade reached a record $35 trillion in 2025. In 2026, higher trade values are being driven by price increases amid the energy shock. The global trade map is shifting: trade between China and the United States has fallen by more than 20% since 2024, while East Asia has expanded trade with both China and North America. Export controls, investment screening and supply-chain conditions make strategic sectors harder for new entrants to access.
UNCTAD’s flagship report finds that governments increasingly use industrial, trade, financial and technology policies to pursue economic and national security objectives. Market access and the ability to move into higher-value activities now depend more heavily on technology, finance and geopolitics.
But the resilience is fragile and uneven. Growth is slowing, financial risks are mounting and development finance is under strain. Apart from a handful of Asian economies, most of the global South is falling further behind.
The rules of the game are also changing. Governments are using trade restrictions, financial subsidies and technology controls to compete for industries seen as vital to economic and national security, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure and clean energy technologies. Called geoeconomics, it's reshaping global trade and investment.
Yet the changing map of global production also creates openings. As companies shift operations, some developing economies are attracting new trade and investment. The question is whether developing economies can turn these openings into stronger industries and lasting growth.
Calls to action:
Support industries over the long term, building skills, research and local suppliers until they can compete on their own.
Use financial policy to support industry. Tie foreign investment to local suppliers, technology transfer and more value created at home.
Help countries move into higher-value activities instead of remaining stuck in the lowest-value parts of global supply chains.
Strengthen regional cooperation on trade, payments, technology and industrial development so countries can create opportunities together.
Full report: https://unctad.org/tdr2026
Production Date: 09 October 2026
Creator: UNCTAD / UNTV CH
Subject Topical: Economy, Trade, Development, Industry
Geographic Subject: GLOBAL
Website: https://unctad.org/tdr2026
Teleprompter
Good morning, good morning and thank you very much for joining us for the launch of Ontad's Trade and Development Report 2026, the Geo Economics of Development.
We have with us today the Acting Secretary General of UN Trade and Development, Mr Pedro Manuel Moreno, and the Head of the Macroeconomic and Development Policy Branch at UNCTAD, Anastasia Nesvetaylova and her team.
So with apologies for the very slight delay thanking you who are in the room and joining us online, I give the floor to the Acting Secretary General, Mr Moreno, so he can present today's report.
The floor is yours.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us for the launch of the Trade and Development Report 2026, titled The Geo Economics of Development, which this year looks at the very significant shifts in the global economy and what that means for developing countries.
I want to start by thanking Anastasia Nesvetaylova and her team in the Division of Globalisation and Development Strategies for FUNTAD, who produced this groundbreaking report.
She will later take you in some detail through it.
So why is this year's report significant?
It is because we see a new global economy rapidly taking shape and analyse the consequences for developing countries of it.
We see clear signals that the global economy is entering a new a more strategic era and also it has proven more resilient to Sox than expected, but it is slowing.
Global growth is projected to reach 2 points, 2.6% this year, down from 2.9% last year, while trade is expected to span by about 4%.
In real terms.
However, gains are extremely concentrated, and energy shocks and financial stability continue to put pressure on developing economies in the context of shrinking official development assistance.
But a more important story lies beneath those figures.
The Trade and Development Report shows that economic growth is becoming more uneven and the gaps between developing regions are widening.
Governments are no longer looking at trades, investment, technology and critical resources only through the lens of economic growth.
They are also considering issues of security and geopolitical power.
Countries are using tariffs and investment rules to secure supply chains, protects strategic technologies and builds domestic capacity for major economies.
This is parts of an increasing economic security for smaller and developing economies.
It can look very different.
Some forces now driving the global economy are making it harder for developing countries to move into higher value activities and here artificial intelligence is the clear example.
We said that also in the recently launched World Investment Report.
AI is becoming a major source of growth in trades and investment.
It is driving the demand for chips, servers, data infrastructure, advanced services and critical minerals.
But the gains, again, are highly concentrated.
The technology, capital and skills needed to compete in this new economy are held by a very small number of actors.
For many developing economies, there is a real risk of being left behind, supplying minerals and other inputs, buying technology but capturing little of its value at home.
For example, Africa mines most of the world's cobalts, which is a strategic mineral at the intersection of technology, energy and geopolitics.
73% of that mineral is held by just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, At less than 1% of value of the global green supply chain stays in Africa.
This is a clear example of how geopolitics is increasingly shaping the prospects for development of many countries.
What outcome finally prevails will depend once again on policy.
The same is true of the wider trading system.
However, the report also points the regions are developed and developing economies that have successfully overcome these challenges, and here Asia stands out.
Asian economies have shown remarkable resilience and in many cases, strong economic growth despite a difficult global environment.
They are adapting quickly to changes in technology, trade and investment.
They are deepening regional supply chains, attracting investment and diversifying their economy.
And this matters beyond Asia itself.
It shows that globalisation is changing, shaped by geopolitics.
But developing economies can still grow when they build productive capacity, invests in capabilities and connect more closely to regional markets or trading groups.
Change is not being driven only by the largest economies.
Rising economies of the global S are increasingly becoming anchors of regional and sectoral economic integration.
They are expanding trades and investment with neighbours, building digital infrastructure, developing new financial and technological links and creating markets that are less dependent on the traditional centres of the global economy.
The report provides specific examples for from India, Brazil, Nigeria and Turkey, for example, which I would encourage you to explore.
The message from UMTAD is clear.
The Global South is not simply responding to this new global economy, it is also increasingly saving it.
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They can successfully navigate the challenges of this new gear economy, which is very challenging.
They can build capacities over time.
They can cooperate regionally to create larger markets, more partnerships and the stronger production networks.
And they can use SS cooperation to share technology, infrastructure and expertise.
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For developing countries to be able to benefit from a global economy, they need policy space, unpredictable trade rules in a multilateral trading system that keeps non discrimination and special and different differential treatment at its core.
Developing countries need investment and finance to support all these long term structural change.
Asia's example shows that this is possible.
The rise of other economies across the global S suggests that the map of economic opportunity is also changing.
But we warned that this new global economy can deepen existing divides.
Developing countries need support to diversify their economies, build productive capacity and capture more value from what they produce to ensure development for their countries and their citizens.
As you know, UMTAD has announced this week that 3.7 billion people now live in countries spending more on debts than they spend on health or education, which is, by the way, 300 million more, 300 million more than in 2025.
This report points to policies and measures that developing countries must consider in a context of the economic pressures, energy shocks and financial stability which is affecting them severely.
As well as declining OEDA which fell by 7% for 1/3 consecutive year.
So a more strategic global economy is is rapidly taking shape.
Our challenges is to make sure it is not a more unequal 1.
Thank you and I'll give the floor to Anastasia.
Thank you ASD.
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The question at the heart of our report is a simple one.
Can poorer countries still progress even as the rules of globalisation are being rewritten?
For decades, the answer assumed getting the policies right.
Structural transformation was key to development.
Manufacturing drove that transformation, while exports opens the door to international integration and growth.
Today, all three of these are faltering.
Manufacturing is diminishing as a driver of growth.
Merchandise trade is slowing.
Trade in services, on the other hand, continues to gain momentum.
Investment in intangible capital is outpacing investment in physical and tangible assets.
This is reshaping the structure of global value chains.
The impact of these shifts on development is going to be long lasting.
Production value capture no longer follows production.
Production itself is becoming more and more specialised.
Only a fraction of investment by companies is now driven by traditional concerns such as low labour costs.
Instead, value is moving into strategic sectors, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, clean energy, advanced computing, where the barriers to entry are high and rising.
For this report, we traced the value inside one of the most advanced AI servers in the market.
In a traditional manufacturing, workers take around 50 to 60% of the value they help create.
In this particular AI value chain, they receive less than 15 four groups of suppliers capture 82% of profit, and most developing economies contribute only raw materials amounting to less than 1% of the final value of the server.
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The structure of trade is shifting, too.
Trade is not slowing, nor is it being abandoned, but the global trade map is being redrawn as old corridors give way to new ones.
This creates fresh openings for many developing countries.
For example, three fastest growing export corridors today centre in the global S Trade is expanding between Africa and Europe, between developing Asia and Europe, and within Africa itself.
But sustained success requires collective effort to avoid fragmentation and careful coordination across trade, finance and digital policies.
Power and security have always shaped the global economy.
Globalisation was never really purely an economic process, but a political economy one.
What has changed is the premise beneath it.
The old promise of market LED globalisation that openness alone would spread prosperity no longer holds.
Access is now allocated strategically, often to those already equipped to seize it.
We see this across every segment of trade except the most standardised manufactured goods.
Against this challenging context, one region does stand out, even as the economy slows.
Asia will contribute 60% of global growth this year.
The fastest expanding economies include China, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
On income per capita, no other developing economies have matched the convergence rate of China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
For the vast majority of developing countries, that convergence has receded since the mid twenty 10s.
Why has Asia fared better?
Not through good fortune and not through openness alone.
Malaysia's trajectory is instructive.
5 Decades of sustained industrial policy moving step by step up the electronics value chain and where national capabilities reach their limits, Asian Asian economies have deepened regional integration, sustaining it even in the face of geopolitical and economic risks.
Here lies the central finding of the report.
Asia's success is not a template that can be readily transferred.
It rests on an alignment of scale, timing, accumulated capability built over decades.
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Even successful cases like Malaysia face a sealing.
The highest value activities, chip design, advanced fabrication stay in the hands of a few established forms impeding for the progress.
So the lesson is not simply to open up or to copy what Asia has done.
It is that development has to be built deliberately and that there is now a real window to do this.
Rising economies of the global S, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey as well as well as others are embarking on exactly these endeavours through their sectoral strategies, trade diversification and regional initiatives across Africa.
A single payment system now links 42 currencies, so the trade need not run through a distant financial centre.
In South East Asia, eight countries have joined their payment system so that people can pay directly in local money across borders.
As chair of ASEAN, Indonesia used this role to build new regional rules on the digital and ocean economies.
These are just a few practical steps that give countries more room to manoeuvre in a difficult context.
The message of the report is therefore a hopeful 1.
Despite the Geo economic challenges, a country's place in the world economy today is not fixed.
It can be built through steady industrial strategy, sectoral priorities, investment in skills and capabilities and through trade and financial cooperation among developing countries themselves.
I would like to thank my team and our colleagues responsible for the timely production and publication of this report for their hard work on the TDR.
The lead authors of the chapters and the writing teams are in the room, and we can address the specific questions or queries together.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
We now open the floor for questions and please go ahead.
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It's Olivia LaPorte Bear from Reuters.
Just really interested what you're saying there about, you know, the AI boom, but how it's highly concentrated in comparison, you know, with other moments in history where we've had these huge kind of technological changes.
I mean, are we going to see AI drive it much bigger gap than we've seen before in terms of inequality essentially with some, some states who are far advanced in able to have the kind of capital to build data centres to be able to get, get get hold of semiconductors, etcetera.
And then everybody else who's left behind.
And then second part is, you know, you said at the end there that, you know, your report has a hopeful note that, you know, there's this opportunity in space for developing countries to to little by little invest and grow and climb up the value chain.
But I mean, obviously, the AI boom is happening now at a rapid pace.
So is there a risk that they're just going to be totally left behind in the next 5 to 10 years?
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Anastasia, perhaps you would like to take the question.
Thank you very, very much, Sylvie.
AI boom in the report will dedicate some time to this analysis.
As all booms, it takes time to embed the financial and economic gains of a new technology.
And clearly this is a very profound and revolutionary structural change to if you want world capitalism.
We're yet to see whether the current enthusiasm and the earnings, not profits of AI companies and AI sector overall are to translate into real productivity gains, sustained growth, employment and even household consumptions.
At the moment we do put do put warnings across all these signs suggesting that should AI boom or the companies themselves falter or face difficulties or encounter financial instability, trade and investment boom are projected to slow.
Usually with financial booms you you see the the big lessons long afterwards.
It's very difficult to predict it in time precisely at which shape the the eventual implosion if you want will take place.
Yes, the the overall is it's not just about AI.
The technological change is quite revolutionary.
It goes through new materials being produced, new types of employment, digital technologies, clearly new capital and the role that finance and technology plays in that.
It's very profound with one of the progressively deepening developmental gap so that the the divergent that we already observe even within the global S risks being even more deeper.
In order to avoid that, or at least in order to address that, developing countries needs to embark on integration on a set of integration efforts.
Because 1 clear lesson from all of this is that autonomy and isolation are not the way forward.
You will be completely marginalised if you decide to to not pursue integration strategies or or development paths.
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At the back of the room.
Thank you for the media.
Moussa RCL Meyer in TVI have a question about the impact of the Middle East crisis and the the energy shock on the global economy and what are the expectations if this crisis continues for several more months?
And if you have some details about the situation in the Gulf States.
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Thank you very much.
Yes, we do dedicate several sections in Chapter 1 specifically to the effects of the shock.
We observe that.
The uncertainty and volatility does continue to reverberate, however, due to underlying changes in the economy.
So far, the region and world economy have been quite resilient to withstand the oil shock.
The paradox is that it's one of the most large scale supply disruptions.
But so far oil prices, although they're elevated, they they're not projected to to go too high beyond this year.
Although all our projections are quite short term and need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
The the regional impact is also diverse in a sense that some economies in the region have made had been making efforts to diversify the economic structures away from fossil fuels and into new industries or sectors, for example United Arab Emirates, also Saudi Arabia.
It did help that other regions in the global S continued to trade and invest and the role of regional leaders such as India, Indonesia, the rising powers and of course, China are fundamental to so far sustained, sustained success in trade.
But volatility remains and in particular, developing countries are affected by financial fears.
We see that capital flows have become much more volatile in light of the shock and their capital volatility is now twice as high as it was before the beginning of the conflict.
Thank you very much.
We have a question online which I will read out because there is trouble connecting.
It's from a colleague journalist based in Africa.
15% of intra Africa trade is partly payment barriers.
PAPSS connecting 42 currencies is ambitious, but your box so he has read the report says trade financing in local currency remains nascent.
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Is it central clearing or FX liquidity to get from payments to actual trade finance?
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A lot of things are missing the institutional connections, the depth of capital markets, the I think also the the credibility of the payment system itself and the eco connections that will connect businesses, individuals, consumers to new initiatives.
We do know that these are remarkable ideas and projects that are now go beyond trade integration, but financial integration requires much more effort consolidated and bottom up.
We also understand that of course there is, it's very difficult to rely purely on market driven initiatives because the private sector has built its own habits and ways of doing business over over decades.
They do rely on for example, dollar based network and global financial markets.
So the role of the state and Interstate coordination and supporting these initiatives is key.
Thank you very much.
There is a question from Jamie Keaton, AP.
Let's see if we can open the floor for him and he can formulate the question himself.
Thank you very much, Amelia, and just nice to see you all.
Thank you for coming to present.
I wanted to just take up a comment by Mr Moreno about the situation in developing countries in Africa and particularly you mentioned the DRC as a major source of resources.
I wanted to just try to get your outlook as to how can these development rates, how can they growth rates be better equalised in developing countries?
What can be done specifically to ensure that the growth in the global economy is fairly distributed to countries in the developing world?
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Thank you very much.
I think it's for both of you, but Anastasia go ahead.
As I mentioned in my remarks, the the regions outside of Asia are in fact together in in being quite late or below convergence rate with the advanced economies.
At the same time, even China, the champion of growth and very and emotive for growth for developing countries at the moment is only at around 20% of GDP per capita of the level of the United States.
So the challenge is vast.
And you you can say that the equality of that growth is key, but growth is being the operative word here.
The world economy has slowed down compared to its pre pandemic averages and this deceleration is a particular challenge to developing countries.
They do.
They do need global growth.
They do need big markets and access to big markets to to be able to integrate and export and and pursue structural transformation.
But for combination of both technological, Geo, economic and policy reasons, these access to markets is now being questioned or is getting more and more uncertain.
The alternative is to pursue South S, north-south and Triangular Corporation with much more effort, dedication, understanding that the dynamics and structure of trade have changed and it requires different sets of policy effort and policy attention.
Perhaps they should be much more targeted and specific to the context of developing countries, in particular for our commodity exporters.
I noticed you asked about Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For our commodity exporters, one of the challenges is how to embed the statistical growth that can can be generated out of commodity exports on the big commodity cycle into real developmental gains whilst avoiding the resource course and now the financial course.
The curse of financialization when gains, employment and revenues go into very isolated sectors that do not employ many people in some sectors like the critical minerals that you mentioned in in your question.
On the example that I gave in the in the introduction is also important to, to develop policies and support to developing countries to producing countries that generate local value in, in national value chain so that they so that they can generate more, more gains from what they produce and they can produce more inputs midstream and downstream.
The value chain of of in this case, the the critical mean of other things as usual, infrastructure, skills, financing.
I think that depending of, of the sector that we are talking about, we have to look at different targeted approaches to, to see how to support developing countries in, in, in thriving.
Thank you very much.
Next there is a question from John, Sarah Costas, France Vancat.
We open the mic for him.
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Can you hear me there?
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It's also I'm asking a question for The Lancet as well.
You mentioned 3.7 billion people are living in countries that are spending more on on debt than on health and education.
You mention an extra 300 million were added.
In which countries did seize extra 300 million get added?
And my second question is concerning artificial intelligence.
What are the scenarios of uncted on possible II bubble given that the P to E ratio is more than 140, which is one of the highest sincethe.com bust in the early 2000s and what are the implications for financial stability and a spilla by effects for pension funds etcetera?
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Maybe you can take the the question and then we can the, the just to say that the figures on that have been released by us earlier this week.
They're online, readily available.
But I I yield the question to you.
I think I will go with the AI question.
It was Charles Kindleborger, the classic of financial history, who said that financial crisis is always easy to recognise, but very difficult to predict.
We usually have a lot of inside post factum.
So with our AI analysis, we we do recognise that at the moment AI valuations concentration, the exposure to the financial sector, a lot of indicators of financial euphoria in the market are higher, sometimes times higher than they were in 2008, in 2001 or 2000 around.com and around 1929 stock market crash.
So all these historical Ecos are very worrying.
On the one hand, we know that every huge productive and technological revolution is paralleled by a financial euphoria.
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It has happened through centuries.
However, because this particular technology is so fundamentally new, we we lack knowledge as to how it can be digested by the economic system, households, government, society internationally.
We are only beginning to understand the risks that it can generate.
I think our analysis is very cautious and and quite pessimistic.
We do warn that AI race is very young, but it's already too big to fail in a sense that the exposure of key companies, the financial sector, financial institutions to these new opportunities, companies and financial instruments is far too high.
The lack of transparency and the role of debt in these connections is very central.
And from 2008, we know that it didn't end up very well.
Sorry.
Thank you very much.
I think we have a question from Isabel Sacco from FA.
Please open the mic.
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Yes, perfectly.
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I am yes, I, Mr Moreno, you have warned that there is a real risk that in the context where technology, capital and skilled people are concentrated in small group of countries, the global S will be once again be left behind.
So in in that in that context, I would like to ask what is Latin America's position in this new SNR and what should it do to avoid being left behind again?
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I think we'll get back to you Savel on the the specific data for Latin America and the Caribbean.
I don't have the breakout here breakdown here with me.
So we'll we'll get back to you with a question.
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Yes, From what I remember of the top of my head, without the text across all our measured indicators, Latin America is unfortunately lagging behind in terms of integration progress in terms of trade integration.
And although the recent financial payment systems led by Brazil are encouraging.
So we investigated the the increase in new trade corridors, IE export links between continents and between particular groups of countries.
And whilst we see some increases between, for example, Europe, Asia, within Africa, between Europe and Africa, the corridors involved in Latin American countries are either very slow to develop or in fact diminishing.
So for example, one of the corridors we have traced is between Latin America and Africa and that has actually shrunk in the past few years.
So the challenge as well as potential is vast, but the structural conditions and and and problems facing these countries are long known.
It's the under underperformance of value chain then hence difficulties of much more progressive integration, reliance on commodity exports and so far very fragmented ability to address the commodity and financial curse of resource dependent economy.
Thank you very much.
I don't think there are any further questions.
I don't see any.
Jamie again, sorry Jamie again API had not seen that.
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I had a little trouble getting the actual report.
A dear colleague was very kind to send it to me.
And I'm looking at some of the major basic find what, what, what I, I don't quite understand is a lot of the stuff that you say in here is pretty well known and pretty established.
So I mean, in terms of the, you know, AI and the, and the, and the Middle East situation and various other inputs on the, on the global economy.
What if you had to bring it in the two percent, 2.6% rate of growth that you mentioned globally and, and the, and the nearly 4% we went to WTO yesterday said 3.9% with their projection for this year.
So I guess what I'm just trying to find out is what specifically are you, what is the great revelation in this trade and development report that we haven't seen before?
Because it seems like a lot of rehash.
If, if, if I can say that very bluntly based on what we've known, is there anything like a silver bullet here in your report that really is breaking new ground?
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We're a United Nations trade and development body.
And I think the biggest lesson from this report is that despite volatility, despite Geo economic fears and despite geostrategic competition, trade is not slowing, Its globalisation is not reversing, but they're being rewired and remapped through new connections.
These connections might be favouring those in the middle where relationships are now getting much more intense.
Some trade weights are disappearing from earlier huge concentrated notes.
But unfortunately it fares very badly for countries and regions on the margins of trade connections.
All this poses huge historical challenges to developing countries, which were addressed in the conceptual chapter.
To the extent that these are not new challenges, you're absolutely right.
Development has been a long term process and only very few selected countries have really integrated or advanced along their progress.
But for the majority of them, the challenge is still very much there.
Thank you very much.
We have a question from the Philippines.
Bless Ogario from Business Mirror.
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I just wanted to ask since Mopal projected a 4% global trade growth this year and it was also mentioned that most Asian economies are resilient.
So I would just like to ask more specifically about the Philippines.
How much is the country expected to contribute to the 4% global trade flow?
And sorry for the double barrel question, but what is your trade?
What is your outlook for the Philippines trade performance for the rest of 2026, particularly because there are there is a linear risk and its potential impact on agricultural production and exports?
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Thank you very much for the question.
I know that the Philippines has made some enormous effort in delivering much more data to international institutions.
So our sister organisation WIPO has just included it in its intangible capital index.
So congratulations on that.
And that shows just how fast the economy is adapting to the new environment.
I think broadly Asia has increased its contribution this particular year to global growth, but contribution of particular countries.
If you're interested, we will get back to you with a specific number.
At the moment we have it by region only and by sub region.
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity.
One lesson from this year is that climate resilience and climate security is the energy transition.
So the economies that have diversified their energy sources withstanding the current energy shock much better with low inflation transmission mechanisms and therefore more mediated impact on consumption and investment than those who are relying on fossil fuels.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much to all who attended the press conference.
We need to close here.
The spokespersons of course and the staff remain at your disposal for any follow up questions.
The report and all the content associated with it will be available online through our website.
We have made an effort to make it available not only in AUN official languages but also in Swahili and Urdu and Hindi and Indonesian, so to make sure that it reaches developing countries who are at the heart of what we do.
Thank you very much and we hope to hear from you soon.
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