A new report predicts North Korea will post negative economic growth this year due to suspended trade with South Korea.

A Korea Development Institute (KDI) report said that North Korea posted a real economic growth rate of minus nine-tenths of a percentage point last year.

It forecasts that although the communist country is expected to remain on a downward economic trajectory this year from a fall in trade, the North Korean economy is unlikely to slip into an all-out crisis.

The North recorded an economic growth rate of minus one-point-one percent in 2006 and minus two-point-three percent in 2007.

In the last half decade, the only year in which the North posted positive economic growth was 2008.