Most Chinese economists said China's economy would recover as early as this year, a survey has showed.

China Economic Monitoring and Analysis Center, a survey organization of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a report on Thursday that 92 percent of the economists polled believed China's economy would recover from the global financial crisis in 2009, backed by the government's four-trillion-yuan stimulus plan.

The survey was carried out at the end of December last year, among 73 domestic economists who study the macro economy . Three percent of the polled economists said the stimulus package would pay off in 2010.

The polled economists believed China would embrace an early recovery before the global economy picked up speed.

The average prediction of China's Gross Domestic Product growth is 8.0 percent, according to the survey. 86 percent of the economists believed the inflation index would drop from 2008, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) falling from 5.9 to 2.5 percent this year.

China's economy cooled to its slowest pace in seven years in 2008, expanding 9 percent year-on-year as the widening global financial crisis continued to affect the world's fastest-growing major economy, according to data released by NBS.

The 9-percent rate was the lowest since 2001, when an annual rate of 8.3 percent was recorded, and it was the first time China's GDP growth fell into the single-digit range since 2003.

(Xinhua News Agency February 6, 2009)