Due to economic globalization, the range of potential customers has rapidly increased also for Japanese firms. The explosive spread of personal computers and the internet has rapidly reduced the distance between firms and customers, and, in this respect, the gap between large and small firms has shrunk.
In fact, as I will discuss in a moment, the Bank expects total CPI  BIS Review 9/2009  1  inflation to be below zero in the second and third quarters of this year before returning to the two per cent target by 2011.