MELBOURNE, Feb 1: The Impact on Australia of the Asian currency and economic crisis could be more than twice as bad as the federal government was predicting, the head of one of the nation's biggest banks said Sunday, reports AP.

Westpac chief executive Bob Joss said government predictions that the crisis will cut half a percentage point from Australia's gross domestic product understated the situation.

"Our "economists feel that it'll knock about one percentage point off growth, so instead of four per cent growth we ll have three per cent growth." Joss said in a television interview.

"I think It could be even worse than that."

The impact of the Asian crisis had already been felt on Australia's financial markets, with the recent falls in the Australian dollar an example, but the real effects on the economy were vet to come. Joss said.

'The way these things work is that the immediate impact is in financial markets, so we've seen huge impacts.

"But you don't see the real economic impact where it starts to Impact orders and sales and business decisions.

That will come all the way through the year: but for example. the impact on our dollar was quite immediate and substantial," he said.

Westpac's manager of economic strategy and planning. Bill Evans, said the one per cent fall would come mostly from lower export growth and also through lower business investment.