{"id":65772,"date":"2014-11-17T12:12:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T12:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=65772"},"modified":"2014-11-17T12:12:54","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T12:12:54","slug":"japans-economy-falls-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=65772","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s economy falls into recession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan’s economy unexpectedly shrank for the second consecutive quarter, leaving the world’s third largest economy in technical recession.<\/p>\n

Gross domestic product (GDP) fell at an annualised 1.6% from July to September, compared with forecasts of a 2.1% rise.<\/p>\n

That followed a revised 7.3% contraction in the second quarter, which was the biggest fall since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.<\/p>\n

Economists said the weak economic data could delay a sales tax rise.<\/p>\n

Sales tax delay<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is widely expected to call a snap election to seek a mandate to delay an increase in the sales tax to 10%, scheduled for 2015.<\/p>\n

The tax increase was legislated by the previous government in 2012 to curb Japan’s huge public debt, which is the highest among developed nations.<\/p>\n

April saw the first phase of the sales tax increase, from 5% to 8%, which hit growth in the second quarter and still appears to be having an impact on the economy.<\/p>\n

The economy shrank 0.4% in the third quarter from the quarter previous.<\/p>\n

The data also showed that growth in private consumption, which accounts for about 60% of the economy, was much weaker than expected.<\/p>\n

\"Japan's<\/div>\n

The next tax rise had already been put in question by already weak economic indicators.<\/p>\n

“The Japanese economy is in recession and has now contracted in three of the last four quarters,” said Glenn Levine, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics.<\/p>\n

“The most likely course is now a snap election in December in which voters choose, naturally enough, to delay the tax increase.”<\/p>\n

Election expected<\/span><\/p>\n

Speculation had been growing that the Japanese prime minister would call an election next month to gain support just two years after his election.<\/p>\n

Local media are now reporting that Mr Abe could announce the next election as early as Tuesday to be held on 14 December.<\/p>\n

\"Abe\"<\/div>\n
There is growing speculation that Mr Abe could call an early general election<\/div>\n

The Japanese government’s chief spokesperson Yoshihide Suga said on Monday that Mr Abe was expected to decide on various steps to take amid the “severe economic situation”.<\/p>\n

While Mr Abe’s popularity has fallen since he took office in 2012, he is expected to win if an election were called, because the opposition remains divided.<\/p>\n

In reaction to the negative economic data, the dollar went above 117 Japanese yen before settling back at 115.69.<\/p>\n

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index, meanwhile, closed down almost 3% to 16,973.80, marking its biggest one-day drop since August.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japan’s economy unexpectedly shrank for the second consecutive quarter, leaving the world’s third largest economy in technical recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell at an annualised 1.6% from July to September, compared with forecasts of a 2.1% rise. That followed a revised 7.3% contraction in the second quarter, which was the biggest fall since the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":65775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-65772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}