The economy contracted in the final three months of 2015 as Japan struggles to break free of a cycle of expansion and contraction despite more than three years of Abenomics.

Gross domestic product shrank an annualized 1.4 percent in the last three months of the year, following a revised 1.3 percent gain in the third quarter, the Cabinet Office said Monday in Tokyo.

Weakness in private consumption was the biggest contributor to the contraction, undermining Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies to spur inflation and growth in the world's third-largest economy.