¡¡  GENEVA, April 11 (Xinhua) -- While Europe and the United States experienced slower economic growth in 2005, China's economy continued to grow very strongly, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Tuesday.

    China's performance was influenced by the global trend toward more moderate advances, but its gross domestic product (GDP) growth still reached 9.9 percent in 2005, only a little lower than the 10.1 percent figure for 2004, the WTO said in its annual worldtrade report.

    In contrast to its GDP achievement, China's import growth was nearly halved, to 11.5 percent in 2005, the report pointed out.

    It added that China's merchandise exports continued to expand by 25 percent in 2005, even higher than the 24 percent level in the preceding year.

    According to the report, the world economy grew 3.3 percent in 2005, down from 3.9 percent in 2004.

    The GDP performances for the United States and the European Union stood at 3.5 percent and 1.6 percent respectively in 2005, down from the 2004 figures of 4.2 percent and 2.2 percent.

    The overall growth in developing regions remained strong, although somewhat less dynamic than in 2004.

    Developing Asia again recorded the strongest performance among all developing regions, with GDP growth reaching 6.5 percent.

    Like China, India's GDP growth remained outstanding in 2005, reaching 7.1 percent. Enditem