PARIS, June 25: The world economy is likely to grow by about 4.0 per cent this year and the United States should avoid a recession, the governor of the Bank of France Christian Noyer said on Wednesday.

Noyer, who is also a member of the monetary policy council of the European Central Bank, told a press conference that world growth should stabilise around 4.0 per cent in 2008.

The property crisis and the strong rise of raw material prices had left an impression that the world economic cycle, until then going forward, was going to be set back.

He said that some experts had even envisaged a recession in the United States but the reversal has not occurred and the United States had entered a period of “slower growth, and not a recession.

Noyer, in a regular letter to the French president published on Wednesday, said that the world economy faced several risks.

One was an unexpectedly sharp fall in consumption arising from a fall of property prices, and another was continued acceleration of raw materials prices.

A third was a possibility that the financial crisis might slow down growth in “real economies” beyond the sectors of finance.

Noyer said that in the second half of last year, the European economy had entered a phase of great uncertainty which weighs on the outlook for growth.

He said that globalisation has ceased, probably for a long time, to be directly disinflationary.The prices of raw materials seemed to be on an upward trend.

The monetary policy of the European Central Bank takes fully into account the surge of inflation after the summer (of 2007), Noyer told the press conference.

He also said that the growth of lending in the eurozone, and particularly in France, would remain very vigorous, even though signals on credit markets were contradictory.

He noted that banks said they had tightened their credit conditions for businesses and “difficulties over financing are raised but lending to businesses had continued at a strong pace and in France at the end of April had shown growth of 15 per cent.

But lending to households was slowing down more quickly in Europe than in France where growth at the end of April was 10pc compared with 5pc in the rest of the eurozone.—AFP