Wednesday, December 28, 2022
With the lifting of COVID-19 border controls and the government’s domestic travel subsidy, Japan has witnessed tourism rebound and this in turn has helped the country’s retail sales which recorded a rise for a ninth straight month in November.
The visitor arrivals to Japan rose to nearly 1 million in November, the first full month after the country scrapped COVID-19 curbs that effectively halted tourism for more than two years, investing.com reported.
A government domestic travel subsidy campaign to help the pandemic-hit tourism industry, which started in mid-October, also encouraged people to spend on travel and travel goods.
Retail sales grew 2.6% from the year earlier but short of a median forecast of 3.7%. The pace of annual growth in sales, a barometer of private consumption, slowed from 4.4% in October and 4.8% in September.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, retail sales slipped 1.1% in November from the previous month, down for the first time in five months.
