MANILA, May 8 -- The Philippines' gross domestic product (GDP) will continue to expand this year despite a global downtrend, according to the latest economic outlook of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At a press conference on Thursday, IMF Resident Representative for the Philippines Shanaka Jayaneth Peiris said that economic fundamentals in the Philippines remained good.

"Potential growth across the globe is going to be lower but in the Philippines it is rising," he said.

In its biannual Regional Economic Outlook report released this week, the IMF said the Philippine economy could grow by 6.7 percent in 2015 and 6.3 percent in 2016.

Last year, the country's GDP expanded by 6.1 percent but still the second fastest in the region, after China.

The IMF said that cheap fuel, strong sources of dollar income, a rising middle-class and stable government spending will boost the Philippines' economic standing in the Asia-Pacific region.

Earlier, the IMF said poorer prospects in China, Russia, the euro zone and Japanwill hold world GDP growth to just 3.5 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2016.

The forecasts were lower than the 3.8 percent and 4 percent growth for 2015 and 2016 respectively given in the previous World Economic Outlook.

The cut underscored the steady deterioration of the economic landscape for many countries due to sluggish investment, slowing trade and falling commodity prices.

The IMF forecast that the United States, the world's largest economy, will expand by 3.6 percent this year, up a half- percentage point from the previous outlook.

But the economy of China, the world's second largest economy, is still expected to grow 6.8 percent this year, which is 0.3 percent slower than previously expected, and 6.3 percent in 2016.

"Lower growth in China will have an adverse effect on its trade partners, in particular on the rest of Asia," Oliver Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said at a briefing in Beijing in January.

In its own forecast, the World Bank also sees that economic growth in the Asian emerging economies will ease slightly even as the region benefits from lower oil prices and continued economic recovery.

In the East Asia Pacific Economic Update that it released earlier, the World Bank said countries on oil imports or fuel subsidies such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, are seen to gain significantly from the falling oil prices, which could remain up to 45 percent lower in 2015 and may rise "only modestly" in 2017.

The World Bank said that developing economies of East Asia are projected to grow by 6.7 percent in 2015 and 2016, slightly down from 6.9 percent in 2014.

Meanwhile most stocks in the region took a beating for the second straight session on Thursday as investors on Wall Street and others across the region were unnerved by sluggish U.S. data.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 57.37 points, or 0.73 percent, to close on Thursday at 7,816.27.

Other bourses in the region were also down, with Malaysia's main stock index slipping by 0.87 percent, Bangkok dropping by 1. 42 percent, Jakarta slipping by 0.67 percent, and Singapore down by 0.78 percent.