Japan consumer prices down 0.3% in April

Japan's core consumer prices fell for a second straight month in April, dealing another blow to Tokyo's faltering war on deflation, data showed Friday.

The slightly better-than-expected reading of minus 0.3 percent in April offered fresh evidence of the challenges faced by the government and the Bank of Japan.

The weak figures increase pressure on Japan's central bank to expand its vast monetary easing programme possibly as early as its next meeting in June in a bid to power a recovery in the economy, analysts said.

"These are extremely tough conditions for the BoJ," Tsuyoshi Ueno, a senior economist at NLI Research Institute, told Bloomberg News before the report was released.

"(BoJ chief Haruhiko) Kuroda will probably have to move next month as he has repeatedly said he will act if there is a danger for the price target."

The Internal Affairs Ministry announced that core consumer prices, which exclude volatile fresh food prices, dropped 0.3 percent in April, on the heels of a similar drop in March.

The world's number three economy has largely defied more than three years of BoJ and government remedies aimed at boosting prices as well as broader activity.

Data released earlier this month showed Japan's gross domestic product expanded by 0.4 percent between January and March after a contraction in the last three months of 2015.

Friday's inflation figures were slightly better than a Bloomberg forecast of a 0.4 percent fall.