On a world wide level, chemicals sales grew yearly by 5.5% over the last ten years. The EU with an average sales growth rate of 4.3% is below world growth and also below the USA. Japan shows a meagre sales growth rate of 0.4%. The high growth countries and regions are China, Turkey, India, Middle East, Ukraine, Russia and Switzerland, with sales growth rates between 15.7% (China) and 7.6% (Switzerland). Brazil and Korea are also among the top growth performers with around 7.5% annual average sales growth between 1996 and 2006.