Vehicle deliveries last month in Asia’s second-largest auto market fell to the lowest since December 2012 after Japan raised its consumption tax for the first time 17 years, according to industry figures released yesterday. In the run-up to the levy being increased 3 percentage points to 8 percent on April 1, sales had surged for seven straight months.
More broadly, the figures may foreshadow the extent of the consumer backlash resulting from the higher taxes Prime Minister Shinzo Abe imposed to counter the world’s biggest debt burden. Economists estimate that this quarter, Japan will see its biggest economic contraction since the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the country three years ago.
“Any sane person was buying big-ticket items in February or March rather than in April,” Martin Schulz, an economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo, said by telephone. “The Japanese carmakers will have to prove how much they really can work this very difficult market.”
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