The economy in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to maintain a sustained growth rate of over 6 percent, a report launched by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) said here Wednesday.

The report said although the global economy is expected to grow 4.4 percent in 2005, down from the 5.1 percent in 2004, the performance is remarkable in view of an increasingly adverse economic environment led by high and volatile oil price, widening current account imbalances, growing protectionist sentiment in the developed countries and a softening of world trade.

It attributed 2005 growth mainly to the strong performance of the United States and China, their economies together account for over a third of global output and nearly a fifth of global trade and have provided strong momentum to global growth over the last three years.

As the world economy successfully coped with high oil and energy prices in 2004 and 2005, the report estimated prospect for 2006 is likely to maintain the current trend, if other things are equal.

"Based upon our own modeling and simulation, economic prospect in Asia-Pacific region for year 2006 is almost the same as that of 2005 in terms of the average economic growth," said Kim Kak-Su, executive secretary of UNESCAP.

The UN agency forecast 6.2 percent economic growth rate for the region as a whole for 2006, down from the 6.3 percent in 2005.

Since inflation will be a little bit down next year and oil price perhaps will remain at 50 dollars per barrel range, Asian countries should pay more attention to energy efficiency and energy conservation, said Kim.

"There is a little bit caution about the high economic growth in 2006 as uncertainties of avian flu still exist, interest rates is going up, and the Asian economy is largely based on domestic consumption," noted Kim.

According to the report, the main issues confronting the economies of the ESCAP region are volatile oil prices, the impact of a precipitate unwinding of the global current account imbalances, subsequent exchange rate realignments, the emergence of avian influenza as a pandemic in the region and what happens next with the WTO trade liberalization agenda in the context of many bilateral and subregional trade agreements that have been recently completed in the region.

Driven by the cooling down of the Chinese economy, the economic growth in East and North-East Asia is forecasted to slowdown in 2006. However, the economy in South East Asia, like Thailand and Malaysia, will pick up even the region faces the threat of avian flu. As a whole, a growth rate of above 6 percent is anticipated in the ESCAP region for 2006, said Kim.

Source: Xinhua