The Asian economy has performed remarkably well in 2010 and will continue to lead the global economic recovery, but this region also faces an array of policy challenges, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said on Wednesday.

Although the combined Asian gross domestic product (GDP) only accounted for about one fourth of the global GDP, it contributed to around half of the growth of the world's newly-added GDP as the global economy was clawing out of its recession, Anoop Singh, director of the Asia and Pacific department at the IMF, said in response to questions from Xinhua at an IMF press conference.

"The Asian economy is playing a very important role in supporting the world economic recovery," he added.

However, Asia also faced downside risks from external environment, including a possibly weaker global economic growth and financial spillover from advanced economies, Singh told reporters.

China and India were continuing leading the Asian economic growth, and "we are very confident that China's growth will be robust," with its GDP predicted to expand at a pace of 9.5 percent in 2011, Singh said.

However, he also noted that China faces inflationary pressure and has some other policy challenges to tackle.

Singh added that to maintain its growth momentum, the Asian region should stress "rebalancing" its growth, so as to re-orient regional economies toward more reliance on domestic demand and less dependence on exports and external demand.

People's Daily