JAPAN

Japan’s Economy Off-Target for Fiscal 1992: The Japanese government has formally admitted something economists have been saying for months: Japan will not come close to hitting the 3.5% economic growth target that government planners set a year ago. The Economic Planning Agency, the agency charged with building a consensus on economic forecasts, said the economy will grow by just 1.6% in the business year that ends March 31. Since the beginning of the 1992 fiscal year in April, the economy has been stagnant or contracting. In the April-to-June quarter, Japan’s annualized rate of GNP growth was flat compared to the previous quarter. In the July-to-September quarter, it fell by 1.6%.