The government is considering new stimulus measures including boosting graduate employment and the corporate sector, Kyodo News Agency said late on Monday, after data that testified to slowing growth in Japan's main export destinations such as the United States and China and a stimulus-driven domestic recovery that has petered out.

 

Against a backdrop of concerted efforts to talk down the yen after it surged to a 15-year high against the dollar last week, quarterly gross domestic product grew just 0.1 percent for annualized expansion of 0.4 percent.

 

That was well below the median market forecast of 2.3 percent and the United States' 2.4 percent annualized growth in the same quarter.

 

It followed revised 4.4 percent annualized growth in the first quarter, when both exports and a stimulus-driven recovery in consumption contributed to overall growth.

 

In the April-June quarter the stimulus effects have worn off, leaving exports as the sole engine of growth and with its contribution to growth halved to 0.3 percent, the economy just eked out a third straight quarter of expansion