Japan's economy may have grown at a better-than-forecast rate of close to 3 percent for the fiscal year ended last month, the economy minister said yesterday.
The government's last forecast predicted the world's second-largest economy would grow 2.0 percent in fiscal 2003, but a surprisingly strong performance in the October-December quarter has made it virtually certain that figure will be surpassed.
Heizo Takenaka, Japan's economy and financial services minister, said yesterday that he thought the country's gross domestic product will "exceed" the official forecast when the figures are released in May.
Asked by an interviewer on the TV Asahi network if he expected the GDP figure to be near 3.0 percent, Takenaka added: "I think that's a possibility."
The minister said the fundamentals of the economy had "unquestionably improved" since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office three years ago, citing efforts by companies to cut costs and progress by banks in disposing of bad loans left on their books after the collapse of Japan's speculation-inflated "bubble economy" a decade ago.
"It's all going according to the [reform] scenario we came up with three years ago," he said.
Data released in February showed Japan's economy grew a better-than-expected 1.7 percent in the October-December quarter, helped by strong demand for Japanese exports from China.
That meant the government would reach its target of 2.0 percent for fiscal 2003, even if the economy shrank as much as 3.4 percent in the January-March quarter.
Gross domestic product is the value of a nation's goods and services.
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