The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that economic trouble affecting Asian countries will begin to get better by the first half of 1999. It warned, however, that they have to give up the high economic growth rates of the past. An officer of the IMF said the troubled economies would recover from the present economic hardships by the second half of 1999. He added the IMF could not be exact about the timing of a recovery. That would, according to him, depend on how effective governments were in dealing with their economic problems.