Japan's economy squeezed out 0.1 percent growth during the October-December quarter, the government said Monday, in an upward revision of earlier data that had shown a contraction.
The revised numbers show that the economy grew at a yearly rate of 0.5 percent during the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2004, and recorded growth after two straight previous quarters of contraction.
But there's always a but.
But some of the details of the data released Monday, such as rising inventories, which produced an overall positive reading, set off fresh concerns that the fragile recovery could be at risk.
Here's a bit more from the WSJ Online (subscription may be required):
The data paint a marginally less gloomy picture of the economy in 2004. According to the revised data, it shrank 0.3% from the previous quarter in both April-June and July-September. That two quarters of contraction means the economy is considered to have been in a recession. Still, economists attribute some of that shrinkage to a reaction to the unusually strong growth in the final quarter of 2003 and the first of 2004.
And this is kind of interesting.
Demonstrating the waning power of trade to drive Japan's economy, the government also announced the nation's current account surplus shrank 28.2% in January from a year earlier to 774.9 billion yen ($7.46 billion). The surplus, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, fell 12.2% in January from a month earlier, seasonally adjusted.