Japan's economy expanded at an annualized real 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter 2023, revised from minus 0.4 percent in the preliminary report in February, the Cabinet Office said in its Monday report.
Real gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of goods and services produced in Japan adjusted for inflation, gained 0.1 percent from the previous quarter, compared with the preliminary reading of a 0.1 percent decline.
The upward revision, reflecting the latest data from the Ministry of Finance, included corporate statistics. In breakdown, corporate equipment investment growth was revised to 2 percent from a decline of 0.1 percent.
However, personal consumption, which accounts for more than half of Japan's economy, saw a further decline of 0.3 percent from a 0.2-percent quarter-on-quarter drop in the preliminary data, a decline for the third consecutive quarter.
Additionally, private inventories, government consumption, and public investment were all slightly downgraded in Monday's report, which also indicated that the actual GDP growth rate for Japan in 2023 remained unchanged from the preliminary data at 1.9 percent.
Some local economists noted that the upward revision in economic growth for Q4 of 2023 came smaller than expected mostly due to the widening decline in personal consumption, and that the possibility of negative growth in Japan's economy in the first quarter of this year remained over production halts at some scandal-hit Toyota factories and the Noto Peninsula Earthquake areas.
Since April 2023, Japan has been seeing declines in both real wages and real consumption, making it difficult to judge whether the country can escape deflation and achieve a virtuous cycle of wage and price increases, according to analysts.
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