Experts at a regional business and economic forum said Tuesday Asia's future growth faces uncertainties despite its growing share in world trade.

Although Asia's trade has slowed and the region lags behind the world average in the growth of the services trade, its export share has increased together with its growing share in the global intermediate goods trade, according to the 2016 Progress of Asian Economic Integration report released by the 2016 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) on Tuesday.

"A bright spot is that Asia has shifted to a net capital inflow area," Lin Guijun, vice president of University of International Business and Economics, said at the BFA conference. "Despite the 16.3 percent drop in global foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2014, FDI inflows to Asian economies jumped 8.9 percent, with ASEAN's FDI inflows reaching a new record."

In 2014, China became the largest recipient of FDI in the world at $128.5 billion, while FDI inflows to ASEAN countries reached a record $132.82 billion, the economic integration report said.

But challenges remain for the region's economic integration as well as future growth, according to Lin.

"Specifically, Asia's intra-regional trade dependence fell from the historic high of nearly 60 percent in 2012, as most of the major Asian economies have been reducing the level of their trade dependence on Asia," Lin noted, adding that China's trade dependence on Asia dropped from 55.6 percent in 2011 to 46.5 percent in 2014.

Regional economies, especially emerging ones, face uncertainties, such as the direction of monetary policy adjustments of developed economies, price fluctuations of international commodities, the possibility of financial crises in some emerging economies and the development of international trade and investment cooperation, Yao Zhizhong, deputy director of the Institute of World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the conference.

On the same day, the BFA also released two other annual reports on Asian economies - the Development of Emerging Economies report and the Asian Competitiveness report.

The Development of Emerging Economies report warned that debt levels in emerging economies have risen rapidly, and if the trend continues, it would trigger a debt crisis. The ratio of the emerging economies' private sector debt, including residential and corporate debt, to GDP more than doubled to 113 percent in 2014 from 56 percent in 1999.

In addition, according to the Asian Competitiveness report, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea continue to lead 37 Asian economies, with Chinese mainland in ninth, unchanged from last year's ranking.