Japanese growth accelerates

In the first quarter of 2013, Japan's economy grew 4.1 percent compared with the same three months a year ago, the government in Tokyo said Monday as it revised a preliminary estimate of 3.5 percent growth.

Compared with the previous quarter, the country's gross domestic product expanded by a revised 1 percent, the Cabinet Office said in a report.

According to the data, the rise was mainly due to increasing domestic demand which was 0.6 percent higher than in the previous quarter. Private consumption, which accounts for about 60 percent of gross domestic product, increased by 0.9 percent.

Since winning an election in December, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pushed through a new economic policy in an effort to pull the world's third-largest economy out of 15 years in the doldrums. Sometimes nicknamed Abenomics, the policy includes strong government spending as well as aggressive monetary easing on the part of the Bank of Japan.

As a result, Japan's national currency, the Yen, has plummeted about 20 percent, helping the country's exports to become more competitive. Official figures also published Monday, showed that Japan's trade surplus had doubled year-on-year to 750 billion yen (5.8 billion euros).

In April, the central bank already upgraded its growth outlook for the whole of 2013 from an earlier prediction of 2.3-percent growth to 2.9 percent now.

On Monday, Japanese shares surged on the good economic figures, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Market closing 4.94 percent higher.

uhe/msh (AFP, dpa)