MANILA East Asia's economic slump is likely to last well into next year with the terrorist attacks in the United States slowing efforts to reduce the region's sprawling poverty, AFP quoted the World Bank as saying Wednesday.

The bank's half-yearly regional update predicts real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in developing East Asia would fall to 4.6 percent this year from 7.3 percent in 2000.

Output in the industrializing economies of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan as a group would contract by 0.6 percent, having grown 8.0 percent last year. Japan's economy is seen to slip by 0.8 percent from 1.5 percent growth last year.

The attacks, at a time when East Asia was already suffering from the sudden end of the technology boom, will slow investment decisions, dampen consumer confidence in export markets, and reduce tourism, the World Bank's Manila office said in a statement.

"The recovery is at least six months further off, perhaps nine months," said Homi Kharas, the World Bank's chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific.

"This delay will mean fewer jobs and less household income," he said. "The outcome will certainly be bad news for the region's poor."

In a separate report Wednesday, Moody's Investors Service warned a U.S. recession "will most likely drag down exports and thus slow GDP growth across the region."

But it said the credit rating outlook for most East Asian economies remains steady, owing to the regional drive to improve economic conditions ever since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The World Bank said East Asia will recover only mildly to about 5.0 percent next year in what would be the region's weakest year since it recorded zero growth during the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

Japan's gdp would grow only 0.1 percent while East Asian tigers would expand by 3.6 percent.

"The past year was already shaping up to be a difficult one for the region, with cyclical downturn in the it sector hurting a number of countries across the region, pushing some to recession and others below levels of growth which would maintain employment," Kharas said.

Hardest hit have been the "open, middle and upper-income economies" of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, as well as Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

China and Vietnam were less affected, and Indonesia was reaping the benefits of greater political stability.