Investing.com - Japan lowered its assessment of the current economic climate for the first time since October last year, with an official saying Friday rising corporate profits have failed to revive inanimate consumption and business investment, reports say.
For near-term growth prospects, the government repeated its warning about sluggish growth in Asian emerging market economies caused by the recent Chinese slowdown.
In its monthly report for September, the government continued to say the domestic economy is on a "moderate recovery" trend but noted it has some soft spots: consumer spending is sluggish, exports are weak and business sentiment is flat.
In an unprecedented move, the government declined to say officially in its report whether it is downgrading its view.
But Yutaka Murayama, director of macro-economic analysis at the Cabinet Office, told reporters the overall judgment is "weaker than last month" and "closer to a downgrade." He said he would not deny it is a "de facto downgrade."
"The slowness in some areas we noted in the report refers to the disappointing pace of improvement in the positive economic growth mechanism as seen in consumption and business investment," Murayama said. But he added that the expression "slowness" is less negative than the term "weakness" used last year to describe the slump caused by the April 2014 sales tax hike.