UNITED NATIONS - The global economic outlook is still gloomy and no early recovery from the current recession can be expected, a United Nations report said Tuesday. Despite some "green shoots" of economic recovery, "the economic winter is far from over," said the Trade and Development Report 2009, released by the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). "Tumbling profits in the real economy, previous over investment in real estate and rising unemployment will continue to constrain private consumption and investment for the foreseeable future," said the report. According to the report, the current crisis is unprecedented in depth and breadth, with virtually no economy left unscathed. Given this background, global economy is expected to fall by more than 2.5 percent in 2009. Global economic growth may turn positive again in 2010, but it is unlikely to exceed 1.6 percent. UNCTAD economists expect GDP in developed nations to contract by some 4 percent in 2009, and output in the transition economies to fall by more than 6 percent. In developing countries, growth is expected to decelerate from 5.4 percent to 1.3 percent in 2009, implying a reduction of average per capita income. But some developing and emerging-market economies have proved less vulnerable to the current crisis, notably those in East and South Asia, whose economic growth is expected to grow by 3-4 percent during 2009. The leading economies in East and South Asia -- in particular China and India -- have resisted recessionary forces better than others because their domestic markets play a more important, and increasingly growing, role in total demand, the report said. Moreover, the rebound in China in the second quarter of 2009 proves the efficacy of government deficit spending if it is applied quickly and forcefully, it added. In the report, UNCTAD cited deregulation of financial markets as the main cause of the global financial and economic crisis. It also reiterated the need for more stringent financial regulation as well as the reform of the international monetary and financial system. The outlook is bleak, UNCTADs Director of Division on Globalization and Development Strategies Heiner Flassbeck told reporters in New York. Flassbeck cautioned that even in the most optimistic circumstances it could take up to six years for many countries to return to levels of GDP reached in 2007 before the crisis. On the global scale there are only two things that can promote growth, he said. One is consumption [and] the other is investment. There is nothing else, unfortunately. He noted that rising unemployment rates and depressed wages are obstacles to consumption, and new investment is hampered by idle manufacturing capacity and cuts in profits. We can only urge governments to go on with stimulating the economy, said Flassbeck, stressing that all talks about early exit strategies are premature. The world has to wait another one or even two years until the stimulus can be withdrawn and the private sector [can] go ahead on its own. In addition, banks still need to be recapitalized and their balance sheets cleansed of toxic assets before they can be guided back to their traditional role as providers of credit to investors in fixed capital, according to the report. The report also spotlights elements of reform for the international financial architecture, which it says is long overdue, calling for a fundamental rethink of global financial governance to stabilize trade and financial relations by reducing the potential for gains from speculative capital flows. This will reduce the likelihood of similar crises occurring and help create a stable macro-economic environment conducive to growth and smooth structural change in poor countries.