TOKYO
(AP) — Japan's trade deficit widened in September as exports plunged
10.3 percent from a year earlier, weighed down by Europe's debt crisis
and a surge in antagonisms with China that have damaged close economic
ties.
Businessweek
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"japan hit with europe and china"
The deficit for the month was 558.6 billion yen ($7.2 billion), the
Finance Ministry said Monday, higher than the forecasts of many analysts
and bigger than a deficit of about $3.7 billion a year earlier. The
deficit in August was $9.6 billion.
The world's third-largest
economy is "leveling off," central bank governor Masaaki Shirakawa told a
quarterly meeting of the bank's regional managers. He warned that the
risk of shocks to the financial system from the debt crisis in Europe
remains high and slowing global growth is hitting manufacturing and
exports.
With the risk of recession rising, the Bank of Japan
needs to convince markets that it will do anything necessary to pull the
economy out of its two-decade old malaise, said Matthew Circosta, an
economist with Moody's Analytics in Sydney, Australia.
Instead of
sporadic monetary easing, "they need to make it sustained and powerful,"
he said. "They've just got to be more aggressive than they are now."
Many expect the central bank to opt for further easing soon, perhaps as early as the next board meeting, on Oct. 30.
September's
exports totaled 5.4 trillion yen ($68.7 billion). Imports rose 4
percent from a year earlier to 5.9 trillion yen ($75.9 billion),
inflated by additional imports of oil and other fuels for power
generation as most nuclear reactors remain offline in the aftermath of
last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster.
So far, Japan's trade
deficit for 2012, according to the ministry's provisional figures, is
about 4.73 trillion yen ($60.6 billion).
The ministry figures show
exports to all regions falling, apart from a meager 0.4 percent
year-on-year gain in shipments to North America. Exports to
crisis-stricken Europe plummeted 26 percent.
A territorial dispute
with China that sparked anti-Japanese riots in September took a heavy
toll, with exports to China sinking 14 percent from a year earlier to
953.4 billion yen ($12.2 billion). Imports from China climbed 3.8
percent to 1.28 trillion yen ($16.4 billion).
The rise in
antagonisms over disputed islands in the East China Sea has been
especially hard on the auto industry. Auto exports fell 15 percent in
September from the year before
The strong Japanese yen has hurt
the country's export competitiveness, while demand has evaporated as
growth slowed in most regions. Exports of consumer electronics, a
mainstay, fell by double-digit figures from a year earlier.
Resource-scarce
Japan is almost entirely dependent on imported fuel, and it has long
relied on robust exports of high-value consumer goods and industrial
products such as machine tools to help counter the cost of importing its
energy needs.
With most of the country's nuclear plants shut
down, manufacturers and utilities have increased their reliance on
traditional energy sources such as oil and gas, while stepping up
conservation and investments in renewable energy.
Boosted partly
by higher prices, imports of fuels jumped 18 percent in September from a
year earlier to 2.15 trillion yen ($27.6 billion), accounting for more
than a third of Japan's total imports.
AFP
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