MANILA, Philippines - Power was finally restored throughout the main Philippine island of Luzon on Friday, more than 2 days after a typhoon hit the country with unexpected ferocity, killing at least 39 people.

However the search continued for up to 47 people, most of them fishermen, still missing in the wake of Typhoon Conson, which slammed into the archipelago late Tuesday and then cut through Luzon on Wednesday.

The storm, packing wind gusts of 120 kilometers an hour, knocked out power for Luzon, including the 12 million residents of Metro Manila, bringing the country's capital and economic centre to a near standstill.

The head of the National Grid Corporation, which oversees the country's transmission lines, said that power lines serving Luzon had been repaired.

"Basically, it is 100 percent restored," National Grid president Rex Corpuz told Agence France-Presse.

"The main lines are already finished. We are just looking at our spare lines so in case our main lines go out, we can use the spare lines."

Officials previously warned that it might take as long as four days to restore a full electricity service throughout Luzon. Metro Manila was still forced to endure rotating blackouts on Thursday.

Business groups welcomed the end to the power outages, which had cost the country's economy hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The businessmen are all very glad that things are being acted upon very quickly and that the (outages) did not last too many days," said Jose Alejandro, head of the energy committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce.

Lengthy power interruptions would have had a serious impact as exporters were already working to fill orders for the Christmas season, he told AFP.

Alejandro said businesses were caught unprepared after the government weather station predicted the storm would largely miss Manila and hit the northern provinces instead.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said in its latest bulletin on Friday morning that 38 people had been confirmed dead, with 47 missing.

The Coast Guard reported a few hours later that another floating body had been retrieved, bringing the death toll to 39.

Coast guard personnel said they could not identify the body, found in the waters northwest of Manila, and so could not tell whether it was one of the 47 listed as missing.

Vessels are still at sea, scouring the waters for the missing.

The Philippines is in the so-called typhoon belt of the Pacific. Up to 20 typhoons sweep through the country each year, killing hundreds of people.