TOKYO (AFP) — The majority of Japan's top executives have said an expanding phase of the nation's economy has already been over, a poll showed on Sunday.
The Asahi Shimbun daily carried out its latest biannual survey between May 29 and June 12, covering presidents and top executives of Japan's major 100 companies.
According to the poll, 53 companies said "the present economic expansion has already finished," sharply up from only seven firms saying so in the previous survey in November.
Ten companies said the economy will continue expanding until this summer, while 32 replied the expansion phase will last until late this year or even next year, the survey showed.
The respondents raised the gloomy perspective for the US economy and the recent surge in oil prices as well as raw materials as negative factors for the future of the Japanese economy.
Among the companies polled were Sony, Hitachi, Canon and Nintendo.
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said on Sunday that the Japanese economy was showing some signs of a slump amid global uncertainties.
"Concerns about a slowdown in the US economy are growing, while the prospect for the Chinese economy is still unknown," Nukaga told a news programme at TV Asahi.
"We had said the (Japanese) economy was at a standstill, but we are now saying there is weakness" on concerns about possible slumps in corporate earnings and individual spending, Nukaga said.
Japan's economy grew at a brisk 4.0 percent annualised pace in the first quarter of 2008, marking the third straight positive quarter for the world's second-largest economy, which is gradually recovering from a series of slumps since the 1990s.
But many analysts warn that a slowdown is inevitable in the second quarter as the global economic climate chills due to the economic problems in the United States sparked by a housing slump and a related credit crunch.
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