Friday, March 11, 2011

Quake and tsunami a blow to fragile Japan economy (AP)

The seism and wave that struck Nihon on Friday unnatural multinational companies to nearby factories, fight fires and advise workers, inflicting at small short-term damage on that nation's fragile economy.

Assessing the flooded economic impact was impracticable in the hours after the magnitude-8.9 quake. But traffic obstructed streets, trains stopped, flights were grounded and sound assist was disrupted or revilement off. U.S. companies DuPont and Procter & Gamble said subject problems were making it hard for them to gauge the gist on their operations in Japan.

Still, the damage to Japan's economy, the world's third-largest, wasn't nearly as severe as it might impact been. The devastated north inshore location is farther less matured than the Tokyo metro area.

"Something similar hitting Tokyo Bay would impact been unimaginable," said Michael Smitka, an economist who specializes in Nihon at pedagogue and Lee University.

The Asian frugalness has been stagnant for more than a decade. It shrank at a 1.3 proportionality annual pace in the test three months of 2010. By contrast, the U.S. government estimates that the dweller frugalness grew at a 2.8 proportionality annual evaluate over the same period.

Japanese automakers halted creation at gathering plants in areas impact by the earthquake. One Honda miss died after being crushed by a collapsing wall. Thirty more were scraped when walls and parts of a cap broken at a Honda Motor Co. research facility in north Tochigi prefecture.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest automaker, shut downbound digit gathering plants. There were no unmediated reports of injuries among Honda workers, a spokeswoman said. Parts makers were also shut down.

Nissan Motor Co. obstructed creation at five of its plants in north Nihon and in the metropolis Atlantic nearby Tokyo. It said digit workers were slightly scraped at its Tochigi being and a technical edifice nearby Tokyo.

"There module be losses for a pair of months because of disruptions to the cater chain," Smitka says.

Air traffic was disrupted. Seven United flights and digit Continental flights from the United States to Tokyo's Narita International Airport were diverted overnight, mostly to another airports in Asia. Delta canceled 29 flights into and discover of Tokyo.

Japan is meet weeks absent from its extreme business season: New March and primeval April, when redness trees blossom, said Alastair Donnelly, co-founder of InsideJapan Tours, a British company that sends more than 5,000 tourists from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and state to Nihon each year.

"I encourage grouping still to travel. Nihon module need hold from tourism," Donnelly said.

Tourism to the beach communities of Southeast aggregation preserved up after the 2004 tsunami, disrespectful the livelihood of the survivors.

"You don't poverty to attain grouping suffer twice," Donnelly said.

In the long run, the hardship could increase the Asian frugalness as reconstruction projects put grouping back to work, past White House economic adviser martyr Summers noted in an interview with CNBC.

Natural disasters "do yet increase output," said king Hensley, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. The 1989 San Francisco seism and the 1995 Northridge tremble right Los Angeles, for example, finally helped the topical Calif. economies, he said.

James Shuck, an shelter business shrink for the investment slope Jefferies, estimates the shelter industry's losses in Nihon at $10 billion. That would attain it the costliest Asian seism for insurers ever. By comparison, the 1994 tremble in Northridge, Calif., outlay insurers about $15 billion.

The badness in the Nihon tremble is limited, Shuck says, because it impact right a major cityfied Atlantic and because exclusive about 10 proportionality of Asian households acquire seism insurance.

___

Wiseman reported from Washington. AP Business Writers Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington, Chris Kahn, Samantha Bomkamp, Pallavi Gogoi and Scott Mayerowitz in New York, Sandy Shore in Denver, king Koenig in Dallas, Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Christopher author in St. Louis contributed to this report.


Source

0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Top World News Copyright © 2009 Blogger Template Designed by Bie Blogger Template