BANGKOK Thailand's economy narrowly avoided slipping into recession in the second quarter, according to official data released Monday which also cut the full-year growth forecast to just 1.5-2.0 percent.

The official records keeper, the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), said the new forecast took into account last week's U.S. terrorist attacks, but not the fallout from possible retaliatory strikes.

"The NESDB has revised the GDP growth forecast because of the slowdown in the global economy," said the Think Tank's Secretary-General Sansern Wongcha-um.

"The revised forecast has factored in the impact from the recent U.S. terrorist attacks ... but we have not yet taken into account any impact of a war stemming from U.S. retaliation as we are optimistic that there will be no war," he said.

The NESDB said the Thai economy grew by 0.9 percent in the three months to June on a quarter-on-quarter basis, after contracting by 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, AFP reported.

A second successive quarter of negative growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis -- the first seen since the 1997 financial crisis -- would have triggered a technical recession.

The economy grew by 1.9 percent on a year-on-year basis in the second quarter, up from a 1.8 percent gain posted for the previous quarter.

In revising the full-year gdp forecast to 1.5-2.0 percent from an earlier estimate of 2.0-3.0 percent, the NESDB said the crucial exports sector was forecast to drop 6.1 percent to $63.4- $63.8 billion over 2001.

Imports were seen rising 0.1 percent to $62.5 billion, with inflation at 2.0 percent against an earlier estimate of 2.2 percent.

The current account surplus for 2001 was tipped to reach $4.6- $4.7 billion, or 4.1 percent of GDP.