Japan: Disasters Slash Manufacturing

     The Japanese government says the country's industrial production and consumer spending fell at their sharpest pace on record in March in the aftermath of the devastating¹ earthquake and tsunami².

    In a report Thursday, the government said that production at factories and mines fell more than 15 percent last month from February, the most since the country began keeping records in 1953. New vehicle（汽车） production dropped almost in half.

    Meanwhile, as the nation started its recovery efforts, consumers cut their spending by 8.5 percent from a year earlier.

    The Bank of Japan said the impact of the twin disasters, and the continuing effort to control radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, will cut the country's economic growth in the fiscal³ year that began April 1.

    The nation's central bank said it is now predicting Japan's economy will grow by six-tenths of one percent this year, down from an earlier forecast of 1.6 percent. But as the recovery takes hold, the bank predicted the country's economy will advance at a 2.9 percent pace next year.

    Japan is the world's third largest economy. But manufacturing has been markedly curtailed⁴ because of the damage that many factories sustained in the March 11 disasters in the northeastern part of the country.

    Japanese car manufacturers - including Toyota, the world's biggest automaker - have been forced to cut their production lines because of a nationwide shortage of parts they normally buy from other companies. Toyota has estimated that it may lose production of 300,000 autos in Japan through the end of April and another 100,000 at its plants overseas.

    The country's major electronics manufacturers have also cut their production and exports.

    With the industrial cutbacks, the country's exports fell 2.2 percent in March, the first decline in 16 months.(本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)

1 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

2 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

3 fiscal   

adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的

参考例句：

• The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。
• The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

4 curtailed   

v.截断，缩短( curtail的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Spending on books has been severely curtailed. 购书开支已被大大削减。
• Their public health programme had to be severely curtailed. 他们的公共卫生计划不得不大大收缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》