, and reached below 2. 0 per cent in early september. recently, it has moved at a record low level of around 1. 95 per cent. with respect to bank lending rates, the short - term prime lending rate has remained at a record low level of 1. 625 per cent since september 1995. the long - term prime lending rate was lowered by 0. 2 percentage points each in june, july and september and has again reached the record low level of 2. 5 per cent. in these circumstances, short - and long - term contracted interest rates for new loans and discounts ( up to july ) have moved at record low levels. on the stock exchange, the nikkei 225 stock average moved at around ¥20, 000 21, 000 between may and july 1997, but later declined, partly reflecting the fall in u. s. stock prices. it fell below ¥18, 000 in early september, and has recently been moving at around ¥18, 000. in the foreign exchange market, the yen appreciated to ¥110 to the u. s. dollar in the first half of june. however, the yen later reversed its course and depreciated, with some fluctuations, and has recently moved at around ¥120. meanwhile, the yen had also been appreciating against the deutsche mark since may, but recently depreciated somewhat to ¥67 - 69.

, and had therefore fostered the rapid growth of emerging countries. as a result, the share of emerging countries in the world gdp increased while that of g7 countries declined to around 50 percent in the latter half of the 2000s from two - thirds in 1990. the volume of global trade has increased greatly due to the formulation of gvcs. chart 3 shows the global trade volume relative to the world real gdp. it basically continued to be flat during the 1980s, which means the growth rate of the global trade volume had been almost the same as that of the economy. however, it has soared since the 1990s, and the global trade volume increased faster than real gdp. multinational companies demand and supply a wide variety of goods internationally to produce final goods under gvcs. so the growth rate of the trade volume is higher than that of the demand for final products. moreover, they constructed production bases in various regions of the world in forming gvcs. therefore, the increase in the trade of capital goods, such as machine tools and construction machines, also contributed to the increase in trade volume. you might have noticed that, in chart 3, global trade volume kinked after the global financial crisis in the late 2000s and became flat again. we will come back to this point later. asia is the heart of gvcs and, as you know, china has come to be called " the workshop of the world. " multinational firms established the production system, where china is the final place for assembling a product, and the surrounding asian countries supply capital goods and parts. they chose asia as a manufacturing base because they can mass - produce and export products at low cost due to the inexpensive and abundant labor force and industrial sites. also, they expected asia to become a prospective market of consumer goods, because of its large population. another reason, i think, is that governments in asia eased restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector in order to attract direct investment. so how did the gvcs affect economic growth in asia? firms in developed countries have arranged development and production bases through gvcs by seeking the efficiency of each process to reduce production costs and increase value added. hence, asian countries became the production bases of gvcs induced by foreign direct investment, and acquired high technology and know - how. on this point, they are different from the cases of the united kingdom and the united states, which used to be " the workshops of the world. " while production in the united