The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has "excluded" disaster-stricken Japan from its interim assessment of the world's major economies. The OECD says it's impossible to integrate the assessment of Japan's economic growth for the moment, because the full cost of the disaster is not yet known.

A preliminary estimate by Japanese authorities shows the loss of physical capital amounts to between 3.3 and 5.2 percent of Japan's annual GDP. The OECD estimates that Japan's economic growth might be reduced by between 0.2 and 0.6 points in the first quarter, and somewhere between 0.5 and 1.4 points in the second quarter.