If commerce and trade are the lifeblood of an economy, then payment infrastructure is its circulatory system, and cash management professionals sit at the heart of it. Although the environment in recent years has been challenging for cash management professionals, longer term structural trends are being played out that affect not only how the world interacts, but also how it transacts. Treasurers now find themselves in an environment where the direction of trade flows is shifting, and how funds move around the world is becoming more efficient.
In its Global Economy Watch report, consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers argues that 2013 is the year when people will start to see how the global economy will look for the rest of the century. The contribution of emerging economies to global gross domestic product – in purchasing power parity terms – is projected to overtake the contribution of advanced economies in 2013 for the first time since such matters have been recorded.
