Economists such as Yoshiki Shinke from the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute expect a further decline in economic output in the first quarter of this year due to falling exports, as the business newspaper “Nikkei” reported. Economists expect that the Japanese central bank will probably begin in April to normalize the monetary policy that has been aggressively loosened for years and will raise the current negative interest rates. However, economists like Shinke are skeptical about whether the country’s economy is strong enough “to raise interest rates further after that.” According to experts, companies in Asia’s second-largest economy will not be able to avoid their to greatly increase productivity, which is still relatively low. This will hit many companies hard because wage demands will go up at the same time.
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