Singapore  - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in an TV interview late Friday that there is a need for a rebalancing in the world economy, which could mean a shift away from Asia's current export-driven model.

"There will have to be a global rebalancing because we cannot expect the Americans to be consumers of things made all over the world. And the rest of the world as savers lending money to the US to buy things from you," Lee said in an interview with CNBC television.

Such a rebalancing could mean that "there has to be more consumption or investments in Asia," Lee added according to a transcript of the interview published in Singapore media.

But he admitted that such a shift would be difficult, given the structural issues concerned. "We just can't tell households go and spend more money, because they have their needs now, their needs in the future," Lee said.

The Singapore prime minister, who is attending the 14th summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Thailand, warned that the current global crisis has the potential to derail plans for an ASEAN economic community by 2015 as member countries are preoccupied with their domestic economies or political issues.

"And then against this background to pay attention to ASEAN co-operation and to push it forward, that's tough," Lee said. "But it's important for ASEAN to do that because in this global environment, if we give the impression that ASEAN is not fully open for business, I think we will be the losers when the new landscape emerges."

Referring to the worldwide downturn Lee said that it will take some time to get economies restarted. "And even if you spend billions in stimulus packages it doesn't mean that confidence will come back and business will resume over night," he remarked.

Lee didn't rule out the possibility that Singapore's economy might shrink even more than the estimated 2 to 5 per cent this year. "People have asked me, can it be worse than minus five", Lee told CNBC, "Yes, it is possible, because it depends on the global situation."

If Singapore's exports go down by a third, manufacturing also would fall by a third. "And that means gross domestic product will go down by one-twelfth which is about 8 per cent, unless you can make up and grow some other part, construction for example," Lee said. (dpa)