http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=420106
*Japan's economy may shrink at record pace in FY 2008-2009: BOJ*
*TOKYO*, Jan. 22 KYODO
*The Bank of Japan* downgraded its estimates for the country's economic
growth Thursday, saying the world's second-biggest economy may contract at a
record pace in the postwar era for two years in a row.
Reviewing its biannual Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices report
released in October, the central bank said it expects the nation's real
gross domestic product to fall 1.8 percent in fiscal 2008 through March from
the previous year and decline 2.0 percent in fiscal 2009.
If realized, those figures would be the fastest rate of contraction
since the end of World War II, topping the 1.5 percent fall marked in fiscal
1998.
The BOJ had forecasted the real GDP in the current and next fiscal year
would grow 0.1 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively, in its October
projection.
For fiscal 2010, it expects the economy to expand 1.5 percent, down
from a 1.7 percent growth.
The BOJ also said it forecasts the nation's inflation rate, gauged by
the consumer price index, excluding volatile fresh food prices, will rise
1.2 percent in the current fiscal year from the previous year, against an
initial estimate of 1.6 percent growth.
The central bank also revised downward its CPI projection for fiscal
2009 to a 1.1 percent drop, compared with an earlier forecast that the
year-on-year change in the core nationwide CPI would remain flat from the
previous year.
The BOJ expects the inflation rate will contract 0.4 percent in fiscal
2010 through March 2011, also sharply lowered from an earlier projection of
a 0.3 percent increase.
==Kyodo
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