By Tetsushi Kajimoto
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's exports are expected to have risen in April from a year earlier for a second straight month led by U.S.-bound shipments of cars and Asian demand for electronics parts in a sign a weak yen and global recovery are helping the export-reliant economy.
However, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) data due on Wednesday is also likely to highlight the costs associated with a weak currency, with the country expected to log its 10th straight month of trade deficits in April, as a higher import bill offsets export gains.
The median forecast was for a 5.9 percent increase in exports in the year to April, which would follow a 1.1 percent rise in March, a Reuters poll of 25 economists showed.
The data could provide another encouraging signal for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aggressive policies as he seeks to maintain high support in the run-up to an upper house election in July.
Abe's policy mix of sweeping fiscal and monetary stimulus, dubbed "Abenomics", has driven the yen to a 4-1/2 year low against the dollar and boosted Tokyo shares by 70 percent since November, prior to his election the following month.
However, the benefits of a weak yen has not been fully reflected in the trade sector. The drop in the currency has so far sharply raised fuel import costs and offset gains made from an uptick in export volumes, with many analysts predicting trade deficits to persist through this year.
The import bill has been bumped up in recent years as Japan's fuel requirements grew substantially following the idling of nuclear plants in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
"Brisk sales of cars in the United States and shipments of electronics parts to Asia have pushed up Japanese exports, and I expect a weak yen to boost exports from around the summer," said Ayumi Maekawa, a senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute.
"But a trade deficit is likely to persist at least this year given elevated costs of imports and a tepid recovery in the global economy due to uncertainty over China's outlook and weakness in Europe."
Wednesday's data is expected to show imports rising 6.7 percent in the year to April, which would mark a sixth straight month of annual increase, led by gains in liquefied natural gas, according to the Reuters poll.
That would bring Japan's trade balance into a deficit of 621.1 billion yen ($6.03 billion), marking a 10th straight month of deficits, the longest such run since 1979-1980 when the import bill was hit by surging oil prices, the poll showed.
Data last week showed that the world's third-largest economy grew a faster-than-expected 0.9 percent in January-March from the previous quarter, as private consumption and a rebound in exports led a recovery from a slump last year.
Economists expect the recovery to firm up in the coming quarters backed by exports and private consumption.
But risks to the outlook remain, including uncertainty in the global economy, underlined recently by a string of weak data from the United States and China, Japan's two biggest export markets.
The central bank is expected to leave monetary policy steady on Wednesday, having unleashed a massive burst of stimulus on April 4, pledging to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years to end nearly two decades of stagnation.
($1 = 102.9750 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-april-exports-seen-trade-deficit-persist-024804749.html
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Emily Yoffe 
While it was missing the skydiving antics of last year’s event, Google’s I/O keynote last week wasn’t short on product launches. In between the splashy updates to Google Maps, Search, Android and everything else Google announced, the company also briefly talked about Web Components for a few minutes. While Google’s Sundar Pichai noted that it’s still early days for this technology, he also said he believes that “the vision for it is clear” and that it will allow developers to build “elegant user interfaces that work across all form factors.” Web Components are clearly a topic that’s close to the heart of a number of Chrome developers. Many of them, for example, cited it as one of the Chrome features they are most excited about at a fireside chat later in the week. A number of Google engineers are also working on Project Polymer, which aims to write a web application framework that’s built upon the idea of Web Components and will allow developers to use the ideas behind Web Components on browsers that don’t even feature all of the necessary technologies yet. The fact that it made an appearance during the keynote, right next to WebGL and other more established web development techniques, makes it pretty obvious that this is a technology that Google believes has the potential to change how developers write web apps going forward. So what is this all about? Essentially, Web Components give developers an easier way to create web sites and recyclable widgets on these sites with the help of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript they already know. The ideas behind Web Components have been around for a while (and a few years back, Microsoft backed a similar initiative that never got any traction), but even today, this is still a topic that’s pretty foreign to most. Building large, single-page web apps with a smart component models isn’t easy today. Web Components help developer encapsulate they HTML, CSS and JavaScript so it doesn’t interfere with the rest of the page and the page doesn’t interfere with it. It’s worth noting that, for the time being, developers can’t rely on this to work in all browsers. Chrome Canary includes support for Web Components, but it’s hidden behind a number of flags. Mozilla will likely start adding support for it in Firefox soon, too. Most importantly, though, the Polymer project aims to bring the concept to
