SINGAPORE, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The software industry's worldwide monetary value losses from piracy grew 11 percent to 53 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, according to a study released here on Tuesday.

This is the first time that the industry's monetary value losses from piracy broke the 50 billion level, according to the findings of the Sixth Annual Global Software Piracy Study by the Business Software Alliance and IDC, a global market research and forecasting firm.

The study showed that the worldwide personal computer (PC) software piracy rate rose from 38 percent in 2007 to 41 percent in 2008, mainly due to PC shipments growth in high-piracy countries.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the average PC software rate increased to 61 percent in 2008, up from 59 percent of the previous year, with losses reaching over 15 billion U.S. dollars.

"This increase in the average piracy rate is attributed to the mathematical outcome of more rapid growth of PC markets in economies of higher piracy rates," said Jeffrey Hardee, vice president of BSA, "Even if piracy were to go down in every high-piracy country, their growing market share for PCs could drive the regional average up," he added.

The fertile grounds for PC software piracy are the growing of consumers and small businesses that buy locally assembled computers from non-brand-name vendors, and the increase of availability of pirated software on the Internet, according to the study.