Many of the Asian countries, whose currency and equity markets were battered in the summer of 1997, have implemented financial reforms, while the contagion from the crisis was contained in other emerging markets, analysts say.

"I think things are recovering a lot better than what had been expected. There was a general feeling that when it happened (the crisis) would last for years," said Lawrence Eagles, analyst for brokerage GNI Ltd.

"Looking ahead, we are still in the midst of a capital-based recovery. But as long as interest rates stay low and keep falling we feel quite positive that a lot of latent value that still exists in Asia can still be released," said emerging markets specialist at ING Barings Sean Roche.

The hammer blows that battered the Asian Tigers after the Thai baht was floated on July 2, 1997 also bruised commoditymarkets, with industrials in particular hit hard.

Until then, Asia as a region had been expected to take up the slack as economic growth in the more mature industrialised West tailed off. As Asian economies went into reverse, consumption of non-ferrous materials plummeted. For base metal markets, the effect was severe and prices tumbled to lows not seen in some cases since the early 1980s.

The only way to go is up

Analysts said the in-built economic problems that the crisis highlighted are being tackled, and with reforms being put in place recoveries have taken place.

"Asia, led by South Korea, has shown that those countries prepared to implement reforms can recover...But that is not to say that all the reforms have been implemented," Eagles said.

What happened was that macro-economic policy was eased, allowing governments to move more into deficit and interest rates to ease. This created the stimulus for Asia's financial systems to open up, Roche said.

A key constituent was the forcedcurrency devaluations and de-coupling from the dollar. "A lot of currencies are no longer fixed to the dollar, so we don't have the interest rate links that we once used to have with the US, Roche added.

Because the region has opted for monetary policy independence, domestic interest rates are likely to continue falling, whatever happens in the US, Roche said.

Outside Asia, the knock-on effects, especially in Latin America and Brazil, were not as bad as some had feared.

"Brazil was expected to be in chaos, but they implemented an austere financial policy and cut interest rates," Eagles said.

Brazil's financial experiences of the last 25 years also cushioned the impact on the country's economic structures.

"They are used to hyper-inflation, so they were able to cope with devaluation," Eagles noted.

In Asia, producers of raw commodities such as coffee, cocoa, rubber, palm oil and tin reaped huge profits when currencies crashed, and they continue to benefit, especially in the case of Indonesia,Asia-based analysts said.

Indonesia's Timah -- and other mining companies -- saw their profits spiral higher because their costs were in depreciated currency and their earnings in dollars.

But the downside to this was that as depreciations gathered pace, the cost of raw material imports doubled or tripled, and industries that relied on them such as textiles, livestock farming or manufacturing slumped.

The doubled-edged sword of these was highlighted on other levels as well.

Palm oil, coffee and rubber producers on Sumatra and cocoa producers in Sulawesi rushed to buy the latest car models, emptying showrooms, as affluence swept through plantations.

But grinding poverty on the densely-populated island of Java worsened as the vast mass of the country's 200 million people grappled with soaring prices of local staples.

Now the pendulum is swinging back, as currencies are recovering. In many countries, currencies and stock markets have mounted a strong recovery, and imports of raw materials such asmetals, meals and feeds are picking up too.

"We are seeing evidence of strong demand for metals and crude oil, and we have yet to see re-stocking in Europe and the Far East," Eagles said.

As consumer inventories are low, the consumption growth expected would give these markets a boost. The same applies to cocoa, where chocolate consumption matches general trends.

Grains have been depressed because of poor Asian demand, but the worst is over now, and these prices are always going to be vulnerable to supply disruption.

"Everyone is still concerned about the potential for problems within the Chinese economy, although they seemed to have passed the worst," Eagles said.

And the process of recovery and reform has some way to go. Japan has yet to turn while it could be another two years or more before real economies, rather than financial markets, return to levels before the crisis, analysts said.