Japan inflation lowest since war on falling prices began

TOKYO: Japan's inflation rate has fallen to its lowest level since just after Tokyo launched a high-profile offensive aimed at conquering years of falling prices and tepid growth, data showed Friday.

The disappointing figures -- weighed by weak consumer spending and falling energy prices -- challenge Bank of Japan chief Haruhiko Kuroda's claim that inflation is on an uptrend.

They may also aggravate doubts over Tokyo's wider bid to kickstart the world's number three economy and reverse years of stagnant or falling prices which were blamed for holding back growth and denting firms' expansion plans.

Sustained inflation is a key measure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's three-pronged growth plan, dubbed Abenomics, to resuscitate Japan's long-suffering economy.

The government data on Friday showed that Japan's inflation rate last month came in at 2.2 percent, down from 2.5 percent in December.

But stripping out the effect of a sales tax hike last year, it rose just 0.2 percent from a year earlier, the lowest since a zero percent rate in May 2013, and well short of the Bank of Japan's much-touted 2.0 percent inflation goal which it hopes to reach during the fiscal year starting in April 2015.

Prices had been on the rise, largely due to Japan having to import pricey fossil fuels to plug an energy gap left by the shutdown of atomic reactors in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima accident.

But plunging oil prices have dealt another blow to the BoJ's inflation goals, and doubts are growing over the ambitious target -- even among BoJ members.

Minutes from the central bank's January meeting showed that three of nine policy board members were doubtful about the feasibility of reaching the price target.

Despite insisting that the BoJ was marching toward its inflation goals, Kuroda has also said the BoJ would further expand its unprecedented monetary easing campaign -- launched in April 2013 -- if necessary.

"Currently, 80 percent of private-sector economists expect additional easing by the end of the year," SMBC Nikko Securities said in a note.

"We expect additional easing will come in late April."