Japan’s economy grew at an annual rate of 1.9 percent from April to June, increased from the preliminary growth of 1.3 percent, reflecting stronger capital investment in areas such as digitalisation, government data showed Wednesday.

Real gross domestic product, or the total value of goods and services manufactured in the country adjusted for inflation, increased 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis from the January-March period, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Cabinet Office.

Advertisement

The revised figure was slightly better than an averagely predicted annual growth of 1.8 percent by private-sector economists surveyed by local media.

However, the GDP increase declined far from offsetting the revised contraction of 4.2 percent on an annualized basis from January to March in which Japan saw a resurgence of Covid-19 infection cases.

The rise in capital expenditure initially reported 1.7 percent was upgraded to a 2.3 percent rise, considering brisk business investments in the reporting quarter suggested in Finance Ministry data released last week.

A government official said that business spending on digitalization has been on the rise.

Accounting for over half of the country’s GDP, private consumption was slightly improved from a 0.8 percent growth to 0.9 percent.

However, services expenditures remained sluggish amid a third Covid-19 state of emergency in which the government requested people to refrain from going out and restaurants to close early and not serve alcohol.

Under the shadow of the resurgence of Covid-19 infection cases, a measure of the emergency state over the virus was implemented in Tokyo and some other regions lasting for nearly two months and ended in late June in most areas except for the southern Okinawa prefecture.

Exports and imports expanded 2.8 percent and 5.0 percent respectively, both contracted 0.1 percent from the preliminary numbers.

Nominal GDP, before being adjusted for inflation, slipped by 0.1 percent, or an annual rate of 0.5 percent, in the reporting quarter, revised down from a 0.2 percent annualized growth initially reported.