Statistics and data

The continent also remains the largest seafarer-supplying region in the world. Four of the top five countries supplying seafarers in 2021 were from Asia.

Slow progress in digitalization and paperless transactions, lack of transparency in regulatory procedures and weaknesses in long-term planning are among the issues holding back port performance in the region.

UNCTAD predicts that annual growth in maritime trade between 2022 and 2026 will slow to 2.4%, compared to 2.9% over the past two decades.

By Daniel Hopp, UNCTAD, and Ryan Maia and Himanshu Sharma, UNEP

By Isabelle Durant, Acting Secretary-General, UNCTAD, and Dr. Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General, World Health Organization

UNCTAD helps strengthen international trade statisticians’ skills and capacity, for a continuous flow of high-quality statistics amid pandemic-induced disruptions to data supply.

The 2021 update of the UNCTAD SDG Pulse illustrates in numbers countries’ progress and challenges in achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030.

An UNCTAD report analyses this group of vulnerable nations in the wake of the pandemic, which is estimated to have led to a dramatic fall in their GDPs, especially in those that depend highly on tourism.

By Simonetta Zarrilli and Henri Luomaranta, UNCTAD

UNCTAD is working with national statistical offices to better measure the scale of illegal movements of money across borders to inform firmer policy action.