As the Japanese government announced still-worsening prospects for economic recovery, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's leading business daily, released survey results showing widespread pessimism among presidents of Japan's top 100 companies for the rest of 1998 and perhaps 1999 as well. Just 17.2% of respondents anticipated the domestic economy to bottom out at the end of 1998, while the vast majority, 80.8%, expected negative economic growth to continue at least until April 1999. A slight majority of respondents, 50.5%, expected the economy to enter into a deflationary stage in the immediate future (40% believe the Japanese economy already had reached that point). The poll was taken in mid-August 1998.
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