SINGAPORE: The head of the International Monetary Fund said that Asia's economies, which have been hit hard by the financial crisis, could recover next year, but he warned that the export-dependent continent could not pull through on its own.

The IMF last week announced sharp downgrades of its global growth forecasts made just a few months earlier, reflecting the speed of the global downturn.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told reporters yesterday in a webcast from Washington that Asia needed to boost household demand to reduce its traditional reliance on exports to the United States and Europe, but such a shift would not happen overnight.