11 Japanese think tanks say that price adjusted real GDP will only grow by 0.5% for fiscal year 2014 compared to the 1.2% the government estimate and 1.0% by the BOJ
Last week Japan saw a sales tax induced plunge in GDP of -6.8%
On average the thinkers say that real GDP will expand annually at 4.2% in the Jul-Sep quarter and keep to annualised growth of 2.0% in the following quarters .
They also think that GDP for FY 2015 will be slightly less than the BOJ (1.5%) and Government (1.4%) forecasts and will come in at 1.3%, based on the next sales tax hike to 10%
Sales tax volatility aside, the Japanese economy is still very much a work in progress and it’s still going to be a while before we get a clear picture on the state of it. There are signs that the Japanese people are getting impatient with Abenomics but we’ll need to watch for the market doing the same before we have to worry about trading ramifications.
