Crisis an opportunity to rebalance Asian growth

Today's global economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. And developing-Asia is being hit much harder than initially thought. It is now time-in fact it is an opportunity-to rebalance our recent rapid economic growth to help protect us from future external shocks and to strengthen our internal sources of growth.

Average growth in the region declined about three percentage points last year - to 6.3 percent. Our 2009 Asian Development Outlook now forecasts that growth will slow this year again by close to 3 percentage points - to 3.4 percent.

Many emerging Asian economies will suffer severe recession.