Abenomics fuel Japanese economic boom

Japan's economy has expanded faster than previously thought. Tokyo has revised upward its growth figure for the first quarter, in a sign that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policy, called Abenomics, seems to work.

In the first quarter of 2013, Japan's economy grew 4.1 percent compared with the same three months a year ago, the government in Tokyo said it revised a preliminary estimate of 3.5 percent growth.

Compared with the previous quarter, the country's gross domestic product expanded by a revised 1 percent, the Cabinet Office said in a report.

According to the data, the rise was mainly due to increasing domestic demand which was 0.6 percent higher than in the previous quarter.

Private consumption, which accounts for about 60 percent of gross domestic product, increased by 0.9 percent.

Since winning an election in December, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pushed through a new economic policy in an effort to pull the world's third-largest economy out of 15 years in the doldrums.

Sometimes nicknamed Abenomics, the policy includes strong government spending as well as aggressive monetary easing on the part of the Bank of Japan.