Nearly 70 out of 100 Japanese business leaders forecast slow economic growth for fiscal 2001, which begins April 1, with 31 saying a full recovery will not come until after 2002, according to a Kyodo News poll.
The survey of 100 presidents and other top executives at Japan's major firms was conducted in December.
The executives also forecast that Japan's stock market will remain lackluster, with only two of them predicting that the key Nikkei average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which closed 2000 at 13,785.69, would quickly rally to levels above 18,000.