Japan slips to world's 4th-largest economy, behind US, China, and Germany

Japan has slipped to the world's fourth-largest economy as government data released on Thursday showed it fell behind the size of Germany's in 2023. The numbers highlight how the Japanese economy has gradually lost its competitiveness and productivity while the population shrinks as Japanese people age and have fewer children, analysts say. Japan fell from the second-ranked economy behind the US to the third-largest in 2010 as China's economy grew. The International Monetary Fund had forecast Japan's fall to fourth. The comparisons among nations' economies look at nominal GDP, which doesn't reflect some different national conditions, and is in dollar terms. Japan's nominal GDP totalled USD 4.2 trillion last year, or about 591 trillion yen. Germany's, announced last month, was USD 4.4 trillion, or USD 4.5 trillion, depending on the currency conversion. For the latest October-December quarter, the Japanese economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.4 per cent, and minus 0.1 per cent from