Japan narrowly averts technical recession
Japan narrowly avoided entering a technical recession in the second half of last year, with revised data on Monday showing output growing 0.1% in the fourth quarter.
Gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth-largest economy inched up 0.1% between October and December from the previous three months, the cabinet office said.
This reversed an earlier preliminary estimate for a 0.1% contraction following negative growth of 0.8% in the third quarter.
Technical recession is generally defined as two successive quarters of falling GDP.
Stronger-than-expected corporate investment drove up the overall figure in the latest data which still showed generally weak consumption in Japan.
Still, the data fell short of 0.3% quarterly growth that economists had expected for the revision, according to a survey by Bloomberg News.
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