Japan Posts Largest Gdp Contraction In April - June
Economic analysts are expecting Japan to post growth for its gross domestic product in the July-September period despite a historic downturn in the previous quarter.
Japan's Cabinet Office announced on Monday that GDP shrank at an annualized 27.8 percent in real terms in the April-June period compared with the previous quarter.
The figure was far steeper than the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and the worst since comparable data became available in 1980.
The Cabinet Office projected last month that the country's GDP will contract by around 4.5 percent in real terms in this fiscal year through next March.
The office is now saying to maintain that projection the Japanese economy must expand at an annualized rate of around 13.6 percent for three consecutive quarters.
Many private research firms are forecasting that the Japanese economy will grow in the July-September period, saying that the economy has recovered after the state of emergency was lifted in May. Some even say the economy will grow at an annualized rate of more than 10 percent.
However, Kobayashi Shinichiro, chief researcher at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting, sees a relatively small growth for the July-September period.
He says that if the economy becomes sluggish from August onward, GDP will grow at very low rate or plunge into the negative territory in the October-December quarter.
The focus is on whether Japan can quickly put its economy back on a recovery track while trying to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
