AKIPRESS.COM - Burdened by weaker consumer spending and exports, Japan’s economy contracted in the second quarter, government data showed on Monday, the first such setback since a short but painful recession last year, The New York Time reports.

The Cabinet Office said gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 1.6 percent in the three months through June. Most analysts believe the economy will return to growth during the current quarter.

Japanese growth rates have fluctuated wildly in recent quarters, and the latest downturn only partially erased gains from a strong expansion in the first quarter, which the government now estimates at 4.5 percent. Last year was even more volatile: consumer spending surged before a sales tax increase in April 2014, lifting the economy to its fastest pace in years, then evaporated afterward, setting off a recession.

The size of the contraction in the quarter through June was roughly in line with the expectations of private-sector economists. In surveys by news agencies, analysts had forecast an annualized contraction of 1.8 percent to 1.9 percent, on average.

But economists say the tide may be turning back to growth in the current quarter. In a recent survey by the Japan Center for Economic Research, an affiliate of Nikkei, Japan’s largest financial newspaper, 40 analysts predicted that growth would rebound by an average 2.5 percent in the period from July to September.

Masamichi Adachi, the chief Japan economist at JPMorgan Chase, said he saw little risk that the economy would contract for two straight quarters, the simplest technical definition of a recession, in part because the tight job market was finally putting upward pressure on wages.

‘‘Consumption likely will pick up, particularly with favorable weather and an expected increase in real income,’’ he said.

The slowdown is nonetheless a setback for the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which has been trying to pull the economy out of nearly two decades of deflation through a stimulus program known as Abenomics.

The program, under which the central bank injects vast amounts of cash into the economy, has kept borrowing costs low and weakened the yen. It has been a boon for global manufacturing companies like Toyota that earn much of their revenues abroad in currencies like dollars and euros.

Many of the jobs that have been created since Abe became prime minister at the end of 2012 have been part-time or temporary, with lower pay and fewer benefits.

The quarterly contraction in Japan could revive speculation on whether the central bank will step up its stimulus efforts. The Bank of Japan has been pouring money into the economy by buying government bonds from the market at a rate of 80 trillion yen a year, or close to $700 billion. Yet the sustained increase in consumer prices that it hopes to generate as a result has been elusive.