Cabinet Office Updates; February Machine Orders

April 11, 2007
By Ken Worsley

I haven’t mentioned it before, but one useful resource for getting updates from Japan’s Cabinet Office (in English) is their email alert service, which sends you an email each time a report is released in English. Of course, not all reports are released in English at the same time as their Japanese originals, so if you can read them in Japanese, it’s best to register on the Japanese page.

Does signing up for the Economic and Social Research Institute email alert system earn you otaku points? Yes, but only a few. Not as many as, say, having a cardboard cutout of Naoki Tanaka in your office (anyone?).

This morning’s report came out in both English and Japanese, which is somewhat of a rarity. The Cabinet Office’s February 2007 Machinery Orders report was short and to the point:

The total value of machinery orders received by 280 manufacturers operating in Japan increased by 5.5% in February from the previous month on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Private-sector machinery orders, excluding volatile ones for ships and those from electric power companies, fell a seasonally adjusted by 5.2% in February.

The report is short, but there are several charts and tables included if you’re interested. From them, we can see that the Cabinet Office projects the total value of machinery orders this quarter to be down, and that exports of machinery surged 23.48% against January, as well as 15.6% against February of last year.

Filed Under Cabinet Office, Economic Reports