Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's economy might make an early recovery from the global slump and return to growth in the second quarter of 2009, the government's top economic analyst said Monday.

Economist Helen Chan told Monday's South China Morning Post that she expected the city's gross domestic product to stop falling or record a quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time in a year in the April-to-June quarter.

Hong Kong's economy has been contracting since the spring of 2008 and recorded a 2.6 per cent and 7.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter contraction in the past two quarters, so a move into positive territory would be a major turnaround.

Chan told the newspaper the situation was not as severe as in the 1998 Asian economic crisis when Hong Kong suffered five consecutive quarters of decline in its worst recession for a generation.

"Hong Kong is more resilient to the current financial crisis than those in the past (even though) the shocks of the current global crisis are the most severe since World War II," she said.

Shares in Hong Kong have slumped in value and the territory's unemployment rate has risen from 3 per cent to more than 5 per cent since the onset of the global crisis.

However, in the past three months, the Hang Seng Index has rebounded impressively while property prices in the city of 7 million have shown signs of weathering the slump. (dpa)