Taking lead in economic recovery

Zhu Min, special advisor to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said, "The world is changing. Last year, emerging markets contributed about 70 percent to the world's new economic growth."

Zhu noted that it was the first time for emerging markets to lead the global economic growth, with low unemployment rates, low budget deficits, high interest rates and robust economic growth on average, while some advanced economies were mired in high unemployment rates, high budget deficits, low interest rates and slow growth rates.

World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin said that developing countries have led the recovery after the financial crisis and have become a major engine of the global economic rebound.

Hong said that emerging economies took the lead to recover from the global financial crisis thus making great contribution to the global economic recovery.

In 2010, the economic growth of emerging countries outpaced that of the developed economies, Hong added.

Ostrovsky said that, generally speaking, BRICS nations have provided large amount of export products and met the needs of the global markets, which helps other countries resist the impact of the economic crisis and, to some extent, supports their economic growth.

Park said the economic crisis showed that world's emerging economies, particularly those in Asia, provided sustained and steady force for the global economic recovery.

Over the past two years, Asian economies have made positive contributions to world's economic growth while the economic scale of the developed economies, in general, have somewhat shrunk, Park said.

Therefore, the economist said, the world economy might have seen a more painful recession if it had not for the emerging economies' contribution to the world economy.

Geoff Barnard, chief economist for South Africa and Russia at the Economic Affairs Department of OECD, said both Russia and South Africa have also demonstrated economic viability as the former's economy grew by 4 percent and the latter 2.8 percent in 2010.