"Given the uncertainty surrounding economic prospects in the United States, it would be comforting if a quick rebound in demand elsewhere seemed likely," the bank said in its annual report.

However, experts at the Swiss-based bank said that it was difficult to identify "alternative poles of growth".

The outlook in Germany seemed particularly problematic with unemployment and saving rates on the rise, factors that hold back consumption.

Indeed, confidence has been weakening practically everywhere in Europe, possibly due to losses sustained by European investors "who financed a large part of the US expansion", the report warned.

And the outlook for other parts of the world is also less than rosy, added the BIS, known as the central bankers' central bank.

"After so many years of slow growth in Japan, due in large part to investment cutbacks, it takes a leap of imagination to envisage any improvement," the report said.

A turning point in Japan's fortunes must come sometime, it said, but added "even if predicting when is never easy".

For China and India, recent, steady and quite rapid growth is expected to continue, whereas elsewhere in Asia, regional demand is seen as increasingly contributing to robust expansion, it added.

Asia however has suffered as a result of the recent SARS epidemic, striking a blow to consumer confidence, the report said.

Experts at the bank called for more balanced world growth that depends less on the United States.

"The US has been the locomotive of the decade," said one BIS official, speaking on condition of anonymity, raising the problem of what will happen if the US economy falters and no-one else takes the lead.

The bank urged Europe to adopt structural reforms to help spur growth, though it acknowledged that such changes were not always easy to bring about.

"Structural changes, whether on the economic or financial side, are always politically difficult to push through," it said.

"This is unfortunate, because more flexible economies grow faster, have lower unemployment rates and adapt better to shocks," it added.

But structural reforms should lead to greater liberalisation, especially in the labour market, the bank said, urging "political courage" to see the reforms through.

The problem arises over "people who are in jobs and want to make them very secure" while "other people who don't have work cannot find it" and have no backing to help them enter the work force, the BIS official added.

The report concluded that structural reforms faced vigorous opposition from "those without the vision to discern the common benefits, as well as those who see their own personal potential for loss all too clearly".