Japan's economy shrank at an annual pace of more than 10 percent last quarter amid an unprecedented collapse in exports and production, a report next week may show.

Gross domestic product for the three months that ended Dec. 31 contracted at an annualized 11.7 percent, the sharpest slowdown since the 1974 oil crisis, according to the median estimate of 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The Cabinet Office will release the report 8:50 a.m. Monday in Tokyo.

Exports plunged a record 23.1 percent in the fourth quarter as global credit markets seized up and world growth sputtered. Toyota Motor Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. — all of which are forecasting losses for the current fiscal year — have fired thousands of workers, heightening the risk that a slump in household spending will prolong the recession.

"External demand has collapsed," said Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura Securities in Tokyo. "The fourth and first quarters will be the worst, but even after passing through this period the economy will stay in a recession for quite a while."

The economy probably shrank 3.1 percent from the third quarter in the first set of GDP data made available for the period following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., economists said. That would be almost triple the pace of contractions in other major economies — the U.S. shrank 1 percent quarter-on-quarter and a report out this week is expected to show the euro-zone GDP fell 1.3 percent.

Net exports — the difference between exports and imports — accounted for 2.3 percentage points of Japan's contraction last quarter, according to economist forecasts. Domestic demand, which includes household spending and capital investment, probably subtracted 0.9 percentage points from growth, they said.

In contrast with the U.S. and China, where the governments are moving forward with a combined $1.4 trillion in stimulus spending, policymakers in Japan are providing little help.