Capital spending by Japanese companies jumped 7.4 percent from a year earlier in the January-March period, marking the sharpest rise in nearly two years, as the corporate sector beefed up investment ahead of the first consumption tax hike in 17 years, the government said Monday.
Business investment by all nonfinancial sectors for purposes such as building plants and introducing new equipment gained for the fourth straight quarter in the three months through March to 12.23 trillion yen, the Finance Ministry said.
Capital spending grew at its fastest pace since the April-June period in 2012, one year after the nation’s economy plunged in the wake of the March 2011 devastating quake-tsunami disaster and the ensuing nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
The results suggested the Japanese economy “has been recovering moderately,” a ministry official said, adding that it is expected to face a temporary downturn following the tax change but may rebound soon as the negative impact of the tax hike wanes.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, business investment, excluding investment in software, climbed a seasonally adjusted 3.1 percent from the October-December period, up for the fourth consecutive quarter, the ministry said.
Following the readings, the government will revise gross domestic product data for the same period and release it on June 9.
via Mainichi
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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