JAPAN

Consumer Demand Declining: Three Japanese government economic statistics show consumer demand is still declining and reinforce an already gloomy outlook for the country’s ability to pull itself out of a severe downturn. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry said sales at major department stores and supermarkets in February posted their ninth successive month of year-on-year declines, falling 5% from a year earlier. The government’s Management and Coordination Agency said household spending in January decreased 2.1% in real terms from a year earlier. Separately, the agency announced that inflation in fiscal 1993 shrank to its slowest pace in five years, the only silver lining in the nation’s prolonged economic slide.