By Xinhua,
Tokyo : Japan’s Economic Minister Kaoru Yosano said Tuesday he is “not confident” the country’s economy, now in recession, will show positive signs in the next fiscal year starting April.
“Looking at conditions at home and abroad, I see few factors that will contribute to positive growth,” Yosano told reporters.
If the negative growth projection for fiscal 2009 is formally adopted by the cabinet in January, it will be the first time the Japanese government would make a contraction forecast for a fiscal year.
On Monday Yosano said that Japan’s economy sank into recession for the first time in seven years in the July-September quarter as the world’s second largest economy has witnessed economic contractions in two quarters in a row.
A recession is a situation in which a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is the total value of the nation’s product and service, contracts for two consecutive quarters.
Japan’s GDP shrank for a second consecutive quarter in the third quarter of 2008, down by an annualized 0.4 percent in real terms, following an annualized 3.7 percent contraction in the second quarter, according to a preliminary report released by the cabinet office earlier Monday.