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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett cast a vote of confidence for Japan on Monday, helping boost sentiment in the region and buoy stock prices across Asia.

“It will take some time to rebuild but it will not change the economic future of Japan,” Buffett said on a visit to a South Korean factory owned by one of his funds. “If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.”

An extraordinary event like Japan’s deadly earthquake presents a buying opportunity for Japanese stocks, said the 80-year-old investor, dubbed the “sage of Omaha” for his successful long-term investment strategy.

“Frequently, something out of the blue like this, an extraordinary event, really creates a buying opportunity,” Buffett said, comparing the Japanese disaster to the September 11 incident in the US in 2001.

Investors were heartened by his upbeat comments, which coincided with signs that many felt equities across the region were oversold.

The MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan index was up 1.1 per cent late on Monday, when Japanese markets were closed for a public holiday. The yen extended losses, down 0.4 per cent to Y80.93 per dollar, after surging 5.2 per cent in the week after the deadly quake on March 11.

Analysts say Japanese stocks will recover some lost ground on bargain-hunting this week after plunging 10 per cent last week.

Foreign investors appear to agree with Buffett. They invested $83.5m in Japanese stocks last week, bringing their total investment so far this year to $23.2bn.

However, it is not clear for how long Buffett’s comments will reassure Asian investors, who enjoyed some relief on Monday as Japan finally managed to cool reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

But recovery from the devastating quake and tsunami is expected to take a long time. The World Bank estimates it may take five years for Japan to rebuild, with real gross domestic product growth negatively affected through mid-2011.

The World Bank says Japan’s temporary economic slowdown will have a modest short-term impact on the region as its neighbours scurry to minimise any fallout from problems in the world’s third-largest economy, especially in their supply chains.

But on top of Japan’s nuclear problems, investors in Asia have another concern: higher oil prices amid intensifying conflict in Libya, which could threaten their exports.

Although Buffett was optimistic about Japan’s long-term economic prospects, he gave no hint that he would start buying Japanese shares aggressively. He cancelled a planned trip to Japan this week as Berkshire Hathaway’s tool-making company, Iscar Metalworking, halted production at its factory in Iwaki, Fukushima prefecture, and delayed opening a second plant in the area in the aftermath of the earthquake. Buffet did not disclose any new holdings in Japan on Monday, with Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report showing no major investment in the country.

And he is unlikely to rapidly increase his exposure to Japan, given his aversion to electronics makers such as Sony, Toshiba and Sharp, whose business prospects he deems harder to predict.