The collapse in exports may push sentiment among the nation's largest manufacturers to its lowest level in more than 30 years, triggering more investment cuts and job losses.

The Bank of Japan's "tankan" survey, an index that measures confidence among large makers of cars and electronics, will slide to minus 55 for March from minus 24 in December when it is released next Wednesday, economists predict.

That would be the lowest since 1975 and the biggest drop since the BOJ started the survey. A negative number means pessimists outnumber optimists.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Sharp Corp. are expecting their first losses in decades this business year as overseas sales plummet. Exports plunged an unprecedented 49.4 percent last month and the World Trade Organization forecast that global commerce will shrink at a rate unseen since World War II.

"Firms will make every effort to avoid going into the red two fiscal years in a row," said Takehiro Sato, chief Japan economist at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo. "Many will unveil major restructuring plans."

The big companies plan to cut investment by 12 percent in the business year that starts Wednesday, which would be the biggest pullback since at least 1983, economists predict the survey will show. Business spending accounts for 15 percent of the economy and cuts could aggravate a recession that's already shaping up to be Japan's worst since the war.

Gross domestic product shrank an annualized 12.1 percent last quarter, the biggest contraction among the advanced economies and Japan's sharpest decline since the 1974 oil crisis. BOJ Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said last month that conditions will remain "severe" next quarter.

Export declines have set new records each month since November as U.S. and European consumers retrenched. The collapse in U.S. sales forced Toyota to cut thousands of jobs and slash domestic production by half this quarter.

Economists predict sentiment at the country's large nonmanufacturers will fall to minus 26 in the March survey from minus 9 previously. While that result would be the worst since the BOJ started tracking the data in 1983, it would be only half as bad as the reading for manufacturing confidence.