An exodus of manufacturing jobs from Japan may prolong trade-balance concerns after the nation reported its first annual trade deficit in 31 years last week.

Panasonic Corp., the nation's largest appliance maker, is moving the headquarters of its $57 billion procurement operation to Singapore in the year starting April 1.

Honda Motor Co., the nation's third-largest carmaker, said this month it will build its new NSX "supercar" in Ohio as the company shifts more output to North America.

Manufacturers from Panasonic and Honda to Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., which helped fuel three decades of trade surpluses, are moving output overseas as the yen trades near a postwar high, making exports less profitable.

The shift may have a long-term effect on the nation's trade balance, which was skewed last year in part by higher energy imports following the Fukushima disaster in March.

"Japanese companies shifting production abroad will be a risk and a large cause for concern in the medium to long term," Yoshiki Shinke, a senior economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute Inc., said. The impact on future trade balances "will depend on the actions of the corporations," he said.

Japan's exports fell for a third consecutive month in December, capping the first annual trade deficit since 1980. Shipments dropped 8 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the Finance Ministry. In addition to the export slump, energy imports rose after an earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, resulting in a 2011 deficit of nearly ¥2.5 trillion.

The numbers highlight a shift toward imports that helped Tadashi Yanai, president of Fast Retailing Co., become Japan's richest man.

Yanai's Yamaguchi Prefecture-based company, Asia's biggest clothing retailer, makes all its clothes overseas and imports them for sale in the home market. In an interview in November, he called the stronger yen a "fatal blow" to domestic manufacturing.

"It's like saying, 'Don't do manufacturing in Japan,' " said Yanai, who was listed by Forbes Asia as Japan's richest man in 2010 and 2009, with a net worth of $9.2 billion as of last January.

The yen strengthened to a postwar high of ¥75.35 against the dollar on Oct. 31 and traded in the upper ¥76 level against the dollar in Tokyo on Monday morning.

Fast Retailing does about 80 percent of its manufacturing in China and the rest in other Asian countries, said Aldo Liguori, a spokesman.

Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Co., said in October Japan faces a "hollowing out" of its industrial base should it fail to counter the yen's rise.

Yokohama-based Nissan, the nation's second-biggest automaker, shifted output of the March compact to Thailand from Oppama, in Kanagawa Prefecture, almost two years ago to offset the effect of the strengthening yen and to cut costs by basing production near suppliers.

The company began construction last year of a plant in Brazil and has said it plans a third assembly factory in Mexico.