The Bank of Japan (BOJ) on Friday lowered its economic assessments on seven of its nine regions as contracting consumption and a sharp drop in capital investments further weakened the nation's economy.

During its quarterly meeting of its 32 branch managers, the central bank made the downgrading economic assessments of the Hokkaido, Tohoku, Hokuriku, Kanto-Koshinetsu, Kinki, Shikoku and Kyushu-Okinawa regions while the economic evaluation of the Tokai and Chugoku regions were left unchanged.

Japan's economic conditions have been "deteriorating significantly" as business sentiment and capital investments were dampened by drastic deterioration in exports and corporate profits, said the BOJ in its quarterly "Sakura Report" released after the meeting.

On January 16, the BOJ downgraded its evaluation of all the nine regional economies, saying Japan's economic conditions "have been deteriorating."

(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2009)