The Bank of Japan issued its semi-annual economic outlook report Monday, with its nine policy board members reportedly seeing an core economic contraction of between 0.9% and 1.2% for the current fiscal year. Its core outlook for CPI in the current fiscal year ranged from a fall of 1.0% to 1.1%. The BOJ said the Japanese economy was experiencing a "severe" adjustment phase in the second-half of fiscal year 2001/02.