Japan Business Investment Rises in Q4

Capital spending by Japanese companies rose for the third straight quarter during the October-December period, as growth in corporate profits on the back of the yen’s slide prompted the corporate sector to bolster investment, the government said Monday.

Business investment by all nonfinancial sectors for purposes such as building plants and introducing new equipment gained 4.0 percent from a year earlier to 9.44 trillion yen ($93.19 billion) in the three months through December, following a 1.5 percent climb in the previous quarter, the Finance Ministry said.

“Capital spending has been picking up” with the nation’s economy moderately recovering, a ministry official said, but he added some firms are skeptical whether the world’s third-biggest economy will continue to recuperate given a planned sales tax hike in April.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, capital spending, excluding investment in software, fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent from the July-September period, down for the second consecutive quarter, the ministry said.

The data will affect revisions to Japan’s economic growth figures, with the Cabinet Office set to release revised gross domestic product data for the same period on March 10.

via Mainichi

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.