Commercial spending in Asia-Pacific grows 13.5% in 2008: Visa

• Source: Xinhua
• [08:51 October 14 2009]
• Comments

Commercial spending in Asia-Pacific grew to 23.4 trillion US dollars in 2008, up 13.5 percent over 2007, according to the Visa global Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) index on Tuesday.

Overall, Asia-Pacific was the second highest contributor to the CCE Index, ahead of the United States (20.3 trillion US dollars).

Europe was the only geographical region to have a higher level of business-to-business, wholesale, retail and government spending than Asia-Pacific.

The major economies in Asia-Pacific region had the highest level of commercial consumption with China (7.2 trillion US dollars), Japan (6.2 trillion US dollars), India (2.7 trillion US dollars), South Korea (2.1 trillion US dollars) and Australia (1.5 trillion US dollars) accounting for 84 percent of the Asia-Pacific total.

Bruce Mansfield, Regional Head of Visa's Commercial Solutions in Asia-Pacific, said, "With the exception of China, which continues to grow on its large base of commercial spending, the real story about growth rates comes from the small but rapidly developing emerging economies in the region. These growth rates in commercial spending are clear signs of rapid advancement in Asia's emerging economies."

Visa operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network, providing processing services and payment product platforms.