Japan corp bankruptcies down but debt up due to JAL

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TOKYO Feb 8 (Reuters) - Japan's corporate bankruptcies fell 21.8 percent in January from a year earlier to their lowest level since 2007 and down for the sixth straight month, as government credit support measures helped small businesses, a research firm said on Monday.

But total debt involved more than doubled last month to 2.6032 trillion yen ($29 billion), the biggest amount for January since the World War Two, due to the collapse of Japan Airlines Corp 9205.T, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

Compared with the previous month, the number of bankruptcies dropped 6.4 percent in January but the amount of bankruptcy debt increased 7.8 times, it said.

While corporate bankruptcies were on the decline, sluggish personal consumption helped boost bankruptcies of supermarkets and restaurants, the research firm said.

JAL filed for protection from creditors with more than $25 billion in debt in January, making it Japan's biggest ever bankruptcy by a non-financial firm. [ID:nSGE60I079]

The combined debt of the airline and its two affiliates stood at 2.322 trillion yen, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the total debt involved in January, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

About 22,900 employees were hit by bankruptcies, topping the 20,000 mark for the first time since 2002, when the economy last crawled out of a downturn.

Japan's economy climbed out of its worst slump in decades in the second quarter last year on the back of exports, but domestic demand is putting a drag on the pace of recovery as consumers face falling wages and a bleak jobs market. ($1=89.37 Yen) (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Joseph Radford)