Japan’s economy shrank at annual rate of 27.8% in the April-June quarter, the worst contraction on record, as the coronavirus pandemic impacted on consumption and trade, according to government data released on Monday.
The Cabinet Office reported Japan’s preliminary seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 7.8% quarter on quarter.
The annual rate shows what the number would have been if continued for a year.
The world’s third largest economy was already ailing when the virus outbreak struck late last year. The fall-out has since gradually worsened both in Covid-19 cases and social distancing restrictions.
The economy shrank 0.6% in the January-March period, and contracted 1.8% in the October-November period last year, meaning that Japan slipped into recession in the first quarter of this year. Recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction.
For the April-June period, Japan’s exports dropped at a whopping annual rate of 56%, while private consumption dipped at an annual rate of nearly 29%.
That was without any full shutdown of businesses to contain coronavirus outbreaks, which have worsened in the past month, pushing the total number of confirmed cases to over 56,000.
