Published monthly by the Cabinet Office. Updated till the month of November 2018 (published on January 16th, 2019).

Recent data trend

Core machinery orders, a leading indicator of domestic capital expenditure activity in Japan, expanded by 7.6% month on month in October. While the expansion is welcome, its strength was insufficient to make up for the much larger decline of -18.3% month on month it suffered in September. Judging by the machinery orders, there seems to be no meaningful upturn in the private capital expenditure trend in Japan. Machinery orders statistics is becoming a poor indicator of private capital i...

Machinery orders track orders received by 280 machinery makers in Japan. The results are published monthly, with a quarterly survey for orders outlook published together with March, June, September and December results. Orders are categorized by the source of orders, namely the public sector, private domestic sectors, overseas as well as agencies that supply machinery to SMEs.

Orders from private domestic sectors are considered to be an important leading indicator for domestic capital investment. As orders from power generators and shipping industries tend to be extremely volatile, private domestic orders excluding these two industries are considered as core machinery orders. It is important to note that even the core machinery orders are still highly volatile, oscillating from month to month. In the recent years, the core machinery orders tend to lead private capital expenditures by 2-3 months.