BANGKOK: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has upgraded China’s growth expectation for 2016 to 6.6 per cent. The updated version of the ADB’s Asian Development Outlook 2016 Report (ADO 2016) slightly upgrades the previous forecast by 0.1 per cent, as the country’s first-half GDP growth surpassed the forecast in March. While external demand remains tepid, according to the report, private consumption and services generated most of China’s growth in line with government efforts to solid wage growth and urban job creation. As the external environment remains fragile with slow recovery in the United States, the euro area and Japan, the report also emphasizes Asia’s critical role in driving the world economy. “Stymied recovery in the major industrial economies, and drag from slower growth in the United States in particular, has been counteracted by policy-supported domestic demand so far this year in some large economies in the region,” said the Asian Development Outlook 2016 update report. The report predicts the gross domestic product (GDP) in Asia to reach 5.7 per cent in both 2016 and 2017, which is “buoyed up by improving external environment and resilience in the region’s two largest economies, the People’s Republic of China and India.”