News Center

With the end of global monetary policy tightening and inflationary pressures easing, global GDP growth is expected to be 3% in 2024. Trade activity will bottom out when the risk of stagflation is lifted. In addition, the United States, India and other countries will hold elections, and those in power will introduce policies to stimulate economic growth. Affected by interest rate hikes and geopolitical conflicts, the euro zone economy will be in a deep downturn in 2023, but with the euro zone's rapid security of energy supply in the short term, superimposed on the end of the interest rate hike cycle, the euro zone economy is expected to usher in a small rebound in 2024, the euro zone GDP growth rate is expected to increase to 1.5 per cent in 2024. With the recovery of global trade, ASEAN's economic growth will recover slowly. Although the growth rate is limited, the growth rate is relatively resilient. ASEAN GDP growth is expected to be 4.5 in 2024.

Under the influence of many positive factors, the global synthetic resin production capacity, production and consumption are expected to be 0.37 billion tons/year, 0.29 billion tons and 0.28 billion tons respectively in 2024, up 3.8 percent, 4.2 percent and 3.5 percent from 2023. Northeast Asia is still the main force of consumption and consumption growth. With the continuous advancement of the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)" and the "Belt and Road" agreement initiatives, the vitality of the Asian market will be stimulated. Asia is not only the world's factory, but also the world's market. In terms of incremental demand, the top three regions are all from Asia, namely Northeast Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, which together account for 74% of the incremental global demand, 47%, 18% and 9% respectively. RCEP will activate the Asian market with a huge population, and will help promote the formation of free trade zones in China, Japan and South Korea, China and ASEAN, China-Australia, and China-Singapore. The advancement of the "Belt and Road" construction will benefit the development of Southeast Asia and Central Asia. At present, ASEAN is China's largest trading partner. In 2022, the trade volume of petrochemical products between China and ASEAN reached 157.2 billion billion US dollars, an increase of 20.1 percent over the previous year, the highest level in history. It is expected that the trade volume will continue to increase significantly in 2024. At the same time, India's economic growth in recent years is very high, or will become the next economic growth engine, resin consumption is also increasing rapidly. In addition, the per capita consumption of resin in Asia is generally low, and the demand for resin products in infrastructure, packaging, daily necessities and other fields is huge. Due to the wide application of resin products, the growth rate of consumption will be higher than that of synthetic fibers and synthetic rubber.

Global synthetic resin production capacity is expected to increase by 13.77 million tons in 2024 compared to 2023, a growth rate of 3.8, down 1.7 percentage points from 2023, with production capacity mainly concentrated in Northeast Asia, accounting for 84% of the global capacity increase. In terms of total production capacity, the world's top five synthetic resin production capacity is expected to reach 375.99 million tons/year in 2024. The top three regions are Northeast Asia, North America, and the Middle East, while Western Europe ranks fourth. From the perspective of capacity structure, the proportion of polyolefin is still 70%, of which polypropylene increased by 1 percentage point to 32% and polyethylene decreased to 38%.

The growth rate of global synthetic resin trade increased to 3.2 in 2024, an increase of 3 percentage points from 2023. First of all, as the global economy improves and China's industrial transfer to Southeast Asia and India, Southeast Asia and India import more resins from China, North America and the Middle East. Secondly, although the EU is the world's second largest chemical production region, its production capacity and market share are declining year by year due to the impact of low-carbon energy transformation, oil and gas shortages, and geopolitical conflicts. The long-term supply of petrochemical products in Europe, especially in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe, has been less than demand, creating market space for the United States and the Middle East to export to Europe.