The Handball World Championship has started. Team Handball is my old sport, which I practiced as semi-professional with some success in my youth.
I love this sport. For those of you who are not familiar with Handball, it is an Olympic sport played indoors with seven players on the field. It is a hard, very physical and tactical game.
Now the World Championship has started, when one of the favorites, France beat one of the organizers Poland 26-24 – in the opening game of the tournament yesterday.
32 teams will participate in 28th IHF World Men’s Handball Championship from Jan 11 to 29, 2023. The matches will be held in 9 stadiums across Poland & Sweden.
Sweden starts tonight by playing Brazil. i will go and watch some of the games in my home town Malmö, where Denmarks group are playing in front of a sold out stadium (with thousands of Danes),
The favourites this time are; reigning champions Denmark, hosts and European Champions Sweden, France and Spain. Iceland has a very youbg and talented team that will be interesting to watch.
Today I had a än excellent strategic planning meeting with the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (GATF) at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) headquarters in Paris.
Maersk has been a partner to GATF a long time and we have done numerous projects together in the past.
The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation is a public private partnership for trade-led growth, supporting governments in developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs) in implementing the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.
GATF projects are aimed to cut through red tape and end costly delays at borders by bringing together governments and businesses of all sizes as equal partners to deliver targeted trade reforms, ultimately to boost trade competitiveness and business conditions, key drivers of inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction.
We had great discussions this morning – & good views as well.
Global trade is expected to have hit a record $32 trillion in 2022 with goods trade up 10% on the year to $25 trillion, and trade in services up 15% to $7 trillion, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
But trade growth took a hit in the second half of last year, with third-quarter goods trade dropping by 1% compared with three months earlier. The likely causes were “geopolitical frictions, persisting inflation and lower global demand”, all of which are expected to negatively affect global trade in 2023, UNCTAD says.
UNCTAD lists the key factors likely to affect trade in 2023 as:
Negative factors: lower economic growth forecasts; high prices for traded goods; record levels of global debt and increasing interest rates.
Positive factors: improved logistics as ports and shipping companies have adjusted to COVID-era challenges; new trade agreements are coming into force.
Other factors: the reshaping of global supply chains, including the diversification of suppliers, reshoring, near-shoring and friend-shoring; the shift to a greener global economy.
Source: WEF
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