China will expand 9.5 percent, faster than an earlier forecast for 8.5 percent, HSBC said. Hong Kong’s growth estimate was raised to 3.8 percent from 2.4 percent. South Korea will grow 4.6 percent, versus the 3.6 percent estimated previously, and Singapore will expand 6.5 percent compared with 5.3 percent.

“Besides continued strength in consumption and investment, we expect exports to rebound over the coming quarter, driven by restocking in the West and inter-emerging markets trade,” HSBC economists Robert Prior-Wandesforde and Frederic Neumann wrote in the report.

They said the region’s central banks will begin to raise interest rates. Australia will increase its key rate later this year, and Korea and Taiwan will move in the first quarter of 2010. China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand will following in the second quarter, the report said.

Source: Bloomberg