Asia's strong economic growth will persist despite an ailing US economy as the region diversifies its export markets and a new breed of young and wealthy citizens drive consumption, investment bank Merrill Lynch said Wednesday.
Inflation is a bigger risk to the region than a slowdown induced by a recession in the United States, the world's biggest economy, said Timothy Bond, Merrill Lynch's chief Asia economist.
Despite a global credit crunch resulting from a crisis in the US housing market, Asian economies expanded 9.5 percent and China grew 11.5 percent in the second half of last year, he said at a Merrill Lynch conference in Singapore. In the first quarter of this year, the region is expected to grow a slower but still robust 9.0 percent, and China 10.5 percent, he said.
"I think we have a lot of evidence to support the decoupling view," he said, referring a view that Asian economies are now in a better position to withstand the impact of a US recession, unlike in the past.
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