Japan’s corporate bankruptcies rose 13.4 percent last month as the fallout from the global credit- market turmoil engulfed the world’s second-largest economy.
Business failures climbed to 1,429 cases last month from the same month a year earlier, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd said in a report in Tokyo yesterday. The rate of increase eased from September’s 34 percent, which was the steepest in eight years.
Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said last month that increasing bankruptcies in the property industry were making it costlier for some companies to borrow, further stifling economic growth.
The bank lowered its benchmark interest rate to 0.3 percent from 0.5 percent last month, the first cut in seven years, to stave off a prolonged recession.
“We expect Japan’s economy to barely expand” both in the year ending March 31 and the next, said Junko Nishioka, an economist at RBS Securities Japan Ltd in Tokyo. “Growth will remain pretty weak for the time being.”
Developers in Japan are among the hardest hit by the financial turmoil as foreign investors withdraw from the market, banks cut lending and the slowing economy dampens demand for homes. Six of seven listed companies that went out of business last month were real estate-related firms, and fallout from the industry’s slump is spreading to the overall economy.
GDP probably expanded at an annual 0.1 percent pace in the three months ended Sept. 30 after contracting 3 percent in the second quarter, the median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News showed.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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