Due to the economy faring worse than we had expected in Q1, we’ve significantly revised down our 2021 GDP forecast. Even so Japan’s economy is still on course for a strong recovery later in the year, it’s just that more of the rebound will now show up in the 2022 GDP growth number. The main brakes on the near-term recovery have lifted a little this week. While nationwide new virus cases remain higher than at the start of the state of emergency, they have fallen sharply over the past five days. And vaccine doses have picked up sharply this week and should continue to do so with many large-scale vaccine centres scheduled to come online over the coming weeks. We now expect output to surpass its pre-virus level by the end of the year.
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