Japan narrowly averts technical recession

Japan narrowly avoided entering a technical recession in the second half of 2023, with revised data on Monday showing output growing 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter.

Gross domestic product in the fourth-largest economy inched up 0.1 percent between October and December from the previous three months, the cabinet office said.

This reversed an earlier preliminary estimate for a 0.1-percent contraction following negative growth of 0.8 percent in the third quarter.

Technical recession is generally defined as two successive quarters of falling GDP.

Stronger-than-expected corporate investment drove up the overall figure in the latest data which still showed generally weak consumption in Japan.

Still, the data fell short of 0.3-percent quarterly growth that economists had expected for the revision, according to a survey by Bloomberg News. (BSS/AFP)