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© 2012 AFPJapan's November trade deficit widens 37.9% on-year
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© 2012 AFP
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some14some
yes truck loads of Yen will turn red figures into black :(
spudman
Abe losing from the start, health problems in 6 months whern things haven't magically righted themselves?
No improvement in relationships with China and Japan is porked.
Onniyama
How long does everyone give Mr. Abe? 6, 7 months?
nath
some14someDec. 19, 2012 - 11:56AM JST
No it won't, there is no market for Japanese high end products. Europe is skint, USA is about t increase taxes and China is reallt getting to hate anything Japanese made.
The figures in the short term will be even higher in the red as the price of importing fuel rises.
basroil
Interesting, since TEPCO alone spends upwards of 500 billion yen a year on oil alone, up from about 150 billion a year. Multiply that number by three (to get in all the energy companies), and you actually get a non-fuel related surplus of 100 billion yen.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-13/tepco-s-fuel-oil-use-increases-more-than-fourfold-in-april.html
As the yen gets weaker and Japan still buys oil in dollars, the energy costs will go through the roof, and with them the deficit.
Japan would be running two year surpluses were it not for idiots insisting that Japan use fossil fuels instead of the more economical nuclear fuel.
Flyfalcon
It is another 1930 era economic policy. Japan friendly neighbor PRC tried stimulate spending for infrastructure in 2008. It was joyful years for local construction sector and world wide commodity market. However it is unsustainable since 2011. Investors realized that they have burnt so much money. Many of Chinese construction projects have not got any commercial returns. Some new residential districts become ghost towns. State own banks wrote off the bad loans which will never be seen.
CVHuan
Folks, Japan has really really nothing to worry about. Japan still has one of the world's HIGHEST per capita GDP and still has the world's 3rd largest economy. Just keep coasting along. Japan is still advanced and developed with a great democratic system to withstand this minor issue.
Tigerta9
Agree, the numbers betray fundamental strengths (including that all of Japan's debt is funded internally) that the US and Europe lack. Once companies find a way to sack all those guys in their 50's that feel so entitled and not only add little to no value but act in ways that are detrimental the country could really begin to get its mojo back.
malfupete
but Japanese debt to GDP is still something crazy like 200%.. which is one of the, if not the highest, in the world. Even if it's held internally, it still has to be paid back... and they do this buy issuing more bonds..
rising wellfare costs and shrinking tax revenues... not something I would call a fundamental strength.
gonemad
When you get your units straight (yen, liters, months, years) you will see that your conclusion is nonsense.
basroil
gonemadDec. 20, 2012 - 12:37AM JST
When you look at the financial reports, you'll see you're wrong. 541 million liters (3.4 million barrels according to bloomberg, kiloliter to barrel conversion pegs it at a 4.7 million barrel) is a huge number, even assuming $80 a barrel (only valid for crude, which soon they won't be able to process themselves) at current yen prices and all months are the same as April (7, 8, 9 are higher, 10-12 are lower, so reasonable ), the amount you get is 380 billion yen.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/tepconews/pressroom/consumption-j.html
If you look, April 2010 had a quarter of the oil used in 2012, and absolutely all consumption is up. Even worse, the natural gas cost went up from about 1.1 trillion yen to 1.6 trillion yen. TEPCO's excess fuel costs alone are more than half of the trillion yen deficit if you look at it that way. There's more energy companies out there, and you can add up all those excess costs and see that the result is huge, most certainly the biggest factor in the deficit.
basroil
Worst of all, we can expect even bigger deficits, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/14/tepco-fuel-idUST9E8EU02R20120514 . 460billion was done assuming about 80 yen a dollar, but everything is now 5% more expensive due to a weaker yen. with that increase forecast, the fuel costs have doubled since 2010, and considering that fuel costs are in the trillions, we can expect to see more of these trade deficits as Japanese money go to shady middle eastern, african, and south american countries.