The government is maintaining its bullish view on the economy even though the real gross domestic product is projected to have shrunk in the third quarter with the adoption of a new GDP data calculating method, the economic minister said Friday.

The Cabinet Office said Thursday it will adopt a new method beginning with revised data for the July-September quarter due out Dec. 8.

Using the new method, the preliminary real GDP growth in the quarter comes to an annualized 0.1 percent shrinkage -- the first economic contraction in six quarters -- against 0.3 percent growth as earlier reported.

"The gap in the figures is due to statistical calculating techniques. There's no need to revise the overall assessment that the economy has been recovering," Heizo Takenaka, economic and fiscal policy minister, said in a meeting of Cabinet ministers.

The new method is to improve the accuracy of the GDP deflator -- the primary barometer for inflation or deflation -- by setting the base year every year, instead of every five years as in the current system, to better reflect changes in economic structures.

Critics have said the current method tends to push up the real GDP data by excessively emphasizing deflation.

Under the current method, quality improvements in information technology products are counted as falls in their prices even though actual product prices remain at the same levels. As the economy became more dependent on these products, price falls on statistics tend to become large.

The change in the calculating method is expected to affect judgments by the government and Bank of Japan on when Japan will climb out of deflation.

"We have not changed our view on deflation. Moderate deflation has continued," Takenaka told reporters.