Consumer prices in Japan dropped 0.3 per cent from a year earlier in March for the first decline in five months amid falling global energy prices, the government said Thursday, according to dpa. The reading represented the largest decline since April 2013, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said. The core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, stood at 102.7 against a base of 100 for 2010, the ministry said. Three years ago, the Bank of Japan started to take aggressive monetary easing measures to combat deflation, aiming to achieve the 2-per-cent inflation target within 2 years. But, the reading in March is far below the goal. In January, the bank decided to impose negative interest rates to boost the world's third-largest economy and once again pushed back the timing of clearing the inflation target to the first half of fiscal 2017 from its previous estimate of the second half of fiscal 2016.
