India along with Japan and China is among the top five countries in the Asia-Pacific region with the highest number of merger and acquisition deals in the first three months of this year, even as the economic downturn has impacted the overall M&A activity in the region.

Overall, the mergers and acquisition activity in Asia Pacific region dropped nearly 30 per cent to $160 billion in the first quarter of 2009 as against $223.21 billion in the same period a year-ago, as per data compiled by global deal tracking firm Zephyr.

India is among the top five countries in the region in terms of the number of M&A activities in the first three months of 2009 with 331 deals, even as the deals saw a 72 per cent decline from the same period a year-ago.

The country had witnessed 571 deals in the first quarter of last year, while they had been as low as 176 in the fourth quarter of 2008, the report revealed.

Japan is at the top with as many as 904 M&A deals in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Australia (636), Republic of Korea (620), China (611) and India with 331 deals, the Zephyr quarterly M&A report published by BvDep pointed out.

However, in terms of the value of the deals India is at the 8th place with deals worth $6.85 billion in the reviewed period.

In value terms, Australia has emerged at the top with M&A deals worth $35.06 billion, followed by Japan ($33 billion), Korea ($24.3 billion) and China ($22.9 billion).

"The first quarter of 2009 brought declines in both volume and value for Asia Pacific, showing the region has not been immune to the global economic downturn, " the report stated.

The number of deals in the region has fallen 24 per cent to 3,952 from 5,194 deals in the first three months of 2008.

Further, metal mining industry topped the table this quarter with Aluminium Corporation of China's pending purchase of $7,200 million worth of convertible bonds in Australian Rio Tinto.

Interestingly, all the top ten deals in the first quarter were worth over $2,000 million with seven being minority stakes and three being acquisitions.