The Covid-19 pandemic and outdated business practices have contributed to the dramatic plunge in Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) between April and June. It collapsed 7.8%, or 27.8% year-on-year, according to preliminary data released Monday, August 17 by the government.
Like that of other developed nations, the Japanese economy finds itself in a ” bad state “, acknowledged the Minister of Economic Revitalization, Yasutoshi Nishimura, who promised to do everything to “Put Japan on the road to recovery”. M. Nishimura veut “Supporting employment through subsidies and private consumption”, all in “Monitoring the evolution of the pandemic and the economy as well as its impact on people’s daily lives”.
The decline exceeds estimates, which forecast a contraction of 26.3%. The Japanese GDP has never experienced such a decline since its first compilations in 1955. The world’s third-largest economy is doing worse than South Korea, whose GDP drop did not exceed 3.3% and than China , where the decline was 3.2%.
Obsolete practices perpetuated
The archipelago, which on August 16 had 56,214 cases and 1,103 deaths of Covid-19, did not resort to complete containment of the population, limiting itself to a “state of emergency” between April 16 and 25 May, limited to “requests” to stay home and limit travel.
Despite this, the crisis has revealed dated practices in companies and administrations, which have slowed down or even complicated their procedures. The use of the seal to validate the arrival and departure of the office, as well as to “sign” an official document, or even to register a modification, required the physical presence of its holder. Companies have tried to maintain this custom, organizing the transport between the homes of executives of documents to be stamped. Employees have multiplied back and forth to stamp their timesheets.
The fax, for its part, has remained at the heart of government communication on the pandemic. It took three days for the information on the contamination to go back to the Ministry of Health – “The most late of all the ministries in terms of digital”, according to an expert in the medical sector – until the government put in place a computer procedure on May 17.
You have 46.23% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
–
