Key View

• Japan’s soft drink demand outlook remains attractive for beverage manufacturers and importers, with the country the world’s sixth largest soft drink market in terms of consumer spending levels and it still offers growth opportunities.
• Fitch Solutions projects that Japanese consumers’ spend on soft drinks will grow at an annual

Key View

• The Covid-19 stimulus package announced by the Japanese government will not be enough to stem the drop in vehicle sales in 2020, but it could be just enough to form a stable base for vehicle sales to rebound from 2021 onwards.
• Japan's USD1trn stimulus measures, especially policies directed towards businesses and employment security

Key View

• Japan will remain an important market for innovative drugmakers due to its pharmaceutical market size.
• The pricing environment will weigh on drugmakers’ growth prospects.

Japan will remain a key market for patented medicine sales. Japan's demographic profile, with a rapidly ageing population, provides considerable growth

Key View

• The Japanese construction sector is expected to experience muted growth in 2020, dragged by a slowing residential buildings sector.
• The rail and renewables sector are outperformers in the infrastructure sector.
• More investments in technology is expected by Japanese contractors to counter the effects of a shrinking labour force.

Key Views:

• Japanese carmakers will have to scale down their domestic vehicle production due to the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak in China disrupting their supply chains.
• The improving export opportunities for Japanese automakers will offer support to output, but its positive impact will be somewhat counteracted by softer domestic

Key View

• Banking regulators have taken a more hands-off approach toward the sector, although the government remains supportive toward the role of fintech in the wider economy.
• The payments segment benefits from strong government support and the presence of several well-established players, although strong cash preferences remain a key barrier

Key View

• The BoJ left its monetary policy settings unchanged at its December monetary policy meeting.
• We now expect the BoJ to remain on hold throughout 2020 by keeping its benchmark interest rate in negative territory at -0.10%, allowing the 10-year JGB yield to fluctuate around 0.0% and by pursuing annual purchases at JPY80trn a year.
• A

Key View

• The merger of Line with Yahoo Japan will alleviate domestic competitive pressures and create scale to better compete with rivals, including Rakuten, Facebook, and Amazon.
• The new-look company is unlikely to make substantial headway in other Asian markets, where services provided by Facebook are already firmly entrenched.

Japan

Key View

• Astellas Pharma and iota Biosciences' research collaboration reflects the growing interest in novel biosensors.
• The joint venture will enable iota Biosciences to develop new classes of implantable biosensors.
• The collaboration will allow Astellas to explore new methods of delivering diagnostics and therapies while increasing product