The economy shrank at an annualized pace of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, the government said Wednesday, posting Japan's first negative growth in a year and signaling the approach of a recession linked to rising oil prices and a slowdown in the United States.
In a report Wednesday, the Cabinet Office said that declining exports and domestic spending caused gross domestic product to contract, reversing the annualized 3.2 percent growth logged in the previous quarter to March. The contraction was worse than the 2.3 percent median estimate of 29 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
It is also the biggest drop in seven years, when GDP shrank by an annualized 4.4 percent in July-September 2001.
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