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Tokyo - Japan's revised first quarter GDP data will be among the key trading cues for Tokyo investors this week, after the market ended in negative territory on Friday.
New growth figures for January-March are due on Monday with initial estimates showing the world's third-largest economy expanded by 0.6% in the first three months of the year, crawling back from a brief recession.
A survey of economists by the leading Nikkei business daily predicted growth would be revised upward to 0.7%, while April current account figures and a government economic sentiment report are also out next week.
Buying sentiment
After the Nikkei's 12-day rally - its longest since 1988 - came to an end earlier this week, the Japanese market struggled to recover as concerns about the US economy and cash-strapped Greece hit sentiment.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange dipped 27.29 points on Friday to close at 20 460.90. Over the week it lost 0.50%.
The Topix index of all first-section shares fell 6.83 points to 1 667.06. It shed 0.39% over the week.
"Players appeared to have gotten exhausted from buying after the Nikkei marked its 12th consecutive rise," said Toshikazu Horiuchi, a broker at IwaiCosmo securities.
"But buying sentiment is not that weak since the decline was still limited despite sizable profit-taking," he added.
Tokyo followed Wall Street lower after the International Monetary Fund slashed its forecasts for US growth this year, citing a ports strike, bad winter weather, a strong dollar and the oil downturn.
Fund head Christine Lagarde also called on the Federal Reserve to refrain from hiking interest rates until 2016, saying conditions were not supportive of a move this year.
Her comments came as markets await the release Friday of US jobs growth for May, which is used by the Fed to guide rate policy.
Vienna - Oil group OPEC is set on Friday to stick by its policy of unconstrained oil output for another six months, setting aside warnings of a second lurch lower in prices as some members such as Iran look to ramp up exports.
With no apparent dissent, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will roll over its current output ceiling, renewing support for the shock market treatment it doled out late last year when Saudi Arabia, the world's top supplier, said it would no longer cut output to keep prices high.
With oil prices having rebounded by more than a third after hitting a six-year low of $45 a barrel in January, officials meeting in Vienna see little reason to tinker with a strategy that seems to have resurrected moribund growth in world oil consumption and put a damper on the US shale boom.
"I am 100% comfortable with the oil market situation," Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali al-Naimi told the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper. He told reporters on Friday that he was confident production from marginal fields outside of OPEC would fall even at current prices.
"The decision taken in November was the right one," said UAE Energy Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui. "It will take time for the markets to rebalance."
Nor is OPEC eager to tackle the tricky questions set to arise in the coming months as members such as Iran and Libya prepare to reopen the taps after years of diminished production.
Will win relief
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh will press the group for assurances that other members will give Tehran room to add as much as 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of supply once Western sanctions are eased, but seems unlikely to pick a fight now.
Just ahead of the meeting, Zanganeh told reporters that he was not pushing for a change in the output ceiling.
"When the production comes, this matter will settle itself," one OPEC delegate told Reuters. That may not occur until 2016, according to many analysts who question how quickly Tehran will win relief from sanctions and be allowed to sell more crude.
Libya, still afflicted by a crippling civil war, hopes to double production to some 1 million bpd by September if key ports resume working, but past efforts have failed to deliver a sustained recovery in shipments.
Brent crude futures slipped below $62 per barrel on Friday, nearing their lowest price in seven weeks, and US oil is on track for its first weekly decline since March as traders anticipate a rollover decision and see weakening physical market conditions. But prices are still $15 off their lows, and some analysts see further gains ahead.
