Japan continues to struggles with stubborn deflation with the government reporting the country's consumer prices dropped for the ninth month in a row. Consumer prices fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year for November amid weak consumer spending and falling global energy prices, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said. The reading was far off the two per cent inflation goal set by the Bank of Japan in April 2013, when it introduced aggressive monetary easing measures. The core consumer price index, excluding fresh food, stood at 99.8 against a base of 100 for 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said. In January, the central bank imposed negative interest rates to stimulate the world's third-largest economy and overcome deflation.