The growth of global trade in 2018 is expected to fall between 2.1 and 4.0 percent, said Yi Xiaozhun, deputy director-general of WTO, at the 6th World Business Leaders (Kunshan) Conference in Jiangsu province. The conference took place from May 17 to 19. Trade promotion agencies, Fortune Global 500 enterprises and trade experts were all invited to the meeting to discuss hot-button economic issues.

According to Yi, global trade grew over 7 percent each year between 1990 and 2000, twice the growth of global economic output. This provided favorable conditions for developed, emerging and developing economies to improve their national income and livelihood.

However, world trade has been in continuous decline since 2012, and was especially low in 2016, when the growth of global trade volume dropped to 1.3 percent. Average growth has been 4.7 percent since 1980. Yi estimated that global trade growth might be lower than 3 percent for the sixth consecutive year in 2017, which has only occurred once in the 70-year history of the multilateral trade organization.

Even so, Yi believes it is reasonable to stay optimistic about the short-term development of global trade despite the current sluggish situation. He estimated that the growth of global trade in 2018 will range from 2.1 percent to 4.0 percent. Trade indices including export orders, traffic at container ports and air freight volume have all seen a rise in the first quarter of 2017. In addition, monthly trade data for various goods suggests faster growth of actual trade volume in recent years.

"In general, the WTO still anticipates the improvement of world trade," Yi said, adding that the organization is also well aware of trade vulnerability and possible risks.