Positive growth for two consecutive years without the tax hike effects The consumption tax hike in April 2014 from 5 percent to 8 percent exerted large adverse impacts on Japan’s economy. So, in assessing the effectiveness of QQE, it is important to look at the economic performance by excluding the estimated impacts of the tax hike.
Chart 1 shows the estimated amounts and the rates of change in real GDP excluding the tax hike impacts; those impacts are estimated by the Bank to be an increase of around 0.5 percentage point for fiscal 2013 and a decrease of around 1.2 percentage points for fiscal 2014.