Growth in emerging Asian economies will be lackluster this year and contribute less to the global economy, despite signs of recovery in the region's major trading partners in the West, Reuters polls showed on Friday.

Much will depend on how the Chinese economy performs. After clocking double-digit growth rates on average over the last three decades, China's economy has slowed down as the government repositions it to rely more on domestic demand.

The consensus from over 200 economists polled April 15-24 was for growth in economies from China to India, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand to be steady and near last year's largely lackluster levels.

That suggests contributions to the world economy from Asia - which for many years drove global growth - may diminish and the road back to strength could be long and slow.

"The region will continue to march forward at a low growth rate - not bad, not great, just what it's done for the past two years. Grumble, stumble," David Carbon, head of economic and currency research at DBS Bank, wrote in a note.

The poll results suggest that the run-up in many stock markets over the past few years on hopes for a strong global pickup that has not yet come may have been overdone.

China's first-quarter growth weakened to its slowest pace in 18 months, highlighting signs of waning momentum, although the slowdown had been widely expected.

Economists predict a 7.3 percent average growth rate for China's economy this year, which would be the slowest since 1990, and a further cooling to 7.2 percent in 2015.

What remains more of an unknown is how China will manage to ease itself off a credit-fueled investment binge since the financial crisis hit and how well it will deal with the overhang and subsequent pressure on asset prices.

China's policymakers are unperturbed and say the modest slowdown is as expected and will continue.

Global Times