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Japan facing challenge of achieving economic growth forecast
/TOKYO. Dec 21: Japan, faced with scant evidence of economic recovery, set itself a tough challenge when the cabinet endorsed a 3.3 per cent real economic growth forecast for the coming year, reports Reuter.
The economic planning a agency's forecast of Gross National Product (GNP) for fiscal 1993 starting April 1 was a hefty increase from the projected 1.6 per cent growth in the current fiscal year, and was higher than forecasts by private economist.
Even some cabinet ministers showed uncharacteristic caution when talking about the official government projection.
EPA Minister Hajime Funda said "it would not be impossible at all" to achieve the growth rate while Minister of
Finance Yoshiro Hayashi suggested. the government "could do it".
Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe also provided a note ■ of caution. "We really need to knuckle down If we want to get close to the 3.3 per cent growth." Watanabe was quoted by Funda as saying.
Private economists have forecast an average 2.7-2.8 per cent increase in the nation's total value of goods and services for 1993/94. with some urging the central bank to further slash interest rates and the government to draw up another economic stimulative package totalling lens of billions of dollar.
Japan's GNP shrank in the ' July-September quarter at a 1.6 per cent annualised rate.
As it Is. the stagnant
ecoomy forced the EPA this weekend to slash its 1992/93 economic growth forecast to 1.6 per cent from the originally projected 3.5 per cent.
This represented the sharpest downward revision since 1982/83 when the government was forced to change its putlook to 3.4 from 5.2 per cent in the wake of the slump caused by the sharp appreciation of the yen.
The revision prompted some leading members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to attack the government's apparent complacency about economic Ills and its confidence In making yet another relatively high growth projection for the comfn'g year.
"It sounds like you are talking about some other country.
not our own," said Hiroshi Mitsuzuka. Chairman of the LDP Policy Affairs Research Council.
Mitsuzuka was also quoted by cabinet members as telling an economic ministers' meeting that the government cannot totally avoid responsibility for its growth forecast.
The government is too slow in releasing indicators. It must scramble to respond to conditions." Shaizuka Kamei. Mitsuzuka's Deputy, was quoted as saying.
Explaining the sharp downward revision for the current year, Yoseki Nagase, Director General of the EPA's Coordination Bureau, told a news conference, “we could not fully foresee the Impact that asset deflation and protracted adjustment of capital
stocks would have on the economy."
The bursting of the cco- . nomic bubble of the late 1980's has pushed down property prices to the level where unrealised losses have squeezed corporate profits and consumer spending.
Another EPA official said the government's 3.3 per cent GNP forecast was higher than those by private economists because the figure "has an aspect of a target for us to achieve."
The EPA has remained bullish about Japan's economic health for 1993/94. citing the future benefits of the government's 10.7 trillion yen economic package announced tn August.
Worried about trade friction
with the US and Europe. Watanabe said, he would explain to other countries that Japan's efforts to boost domestic consumption would help cut its growing trade surplus.
Washington has In the past urged Tokyo to take extra pump-priming steps to achieve an annual official growth rate forecast, although Japanese officials have denied that their forecast is a pledge to the rest of the world.
The EPA forecast Japan's current account surplus In 1993/94 would be 115.5 billion US dollar and the trade surplus 135 billion US dollar surpluses respectively for 1992/93. revised sharply up-words from Its earlier forecasts of 71 billion US dollar and 96.5 billion US dollar.