Japan close to recession

Japan, the world's third largest economical power house, behind the US and recently overtaken by China, is on target to go into recession, the third in four years.

With one quarter of negative growth registered, analysts are forecasting a further decline in growth for the last quarter of 2012, of 0.4%, that would put Japan into a technical recession (two successive quarters of negative growth).

The Japanese Goverment introduced a US$9 bn package of economic measures designed to promote growth just weeks ago, but the amount involved is seen as too small to make any meaningful improvement in the deteriorating economic conditions in the country.

With an election coming up in the near future, an ongoing dispute with China impacting on exports and a declining stockmarket that has lost 15% of its value in the last 6 months, the short term outlook for Japan is not good.