Japan’s Nikkei average hit its highest point in eight months on Monday, led by exporters on a weaker yen and optimism about a recovery for the US economy after news that fewer jobs than expected were lost in May.
But other Asian markets were mostly weaker (Australia was closed) as commodity prices eased.
The Nikkei ended up 1%, after briefly rising as high as 1.4% to reach its highest level since October 8.
That followed a 2.6% rise last week
The yen has weakened against the US dollar, raising prospects for battered exporters, such as the car groups, consumer electronics and equipment companies and other manufacturers.
Figures released yesterday show that the country’s completed current account figures for April show the surplus fell for a third month as exports remained depressed and imports reflected the depressed state of demand in the economy.
The latest figures include goods and services not covered in the earlier released Customs cleared numbers.
The Ministry of Finance (MoF) said the surplus shrank 54.5% to 630.5 billion yen ($US6.4 billion) from April 2008. That was smaller than forecast by the market.
Japan had its first current-account deficit in 13 years in January and while exports have recovered a bit since then, they are still declining and are less than two thirds of last year’s levels.
MoF said exports fell 40.6% in April after a 46.5% drop in March and February’s 50.4% plunge.
Imports fell 37.8% in April, unchanged from March and a solid indicator of how depressed the economy remains.
Meanwhile the Nikkei financial newspaper reported yesterday that a poll of major companies had revealed that they will collectively cut their capital investment by 15.9% in the year to March 2010, the sharpest fall on record.
The paper’s survey said planned capital spending by 1,475 major firms for the year was estimated to total Y22.7 trillion ($A292.09 billion), down Y4.28 trillion ($A55.07 billion) from the March 31, 2008 financial year.
Nikkei said it was the second yearly decline and the biggest percentage drop since the newspaper began the twice-yearly survey in 1973.
Of the 17 manufacturing sectors in the survey, 15 were projected to cut investment this fiscal year, with only the food and pharmaceutical sectors planning to boost collective capital spending.
Non-manufacturers were curbing planned spending by 4.5%, it said.
Figures last week revealed that Japanese companies cut business investment by 25% in the first quarter of this calendar year (the last quarter of the 2009 Japanese financial year).
MOF said that the 25% decline from the same period a year earlier, followed a 17% fall in the December quarter of 2008.
Funnily enough, commentators said the latest fall wasn’t as bad as previously thought.
And Bloomberg reported yesterday that Japan’s corporate bankruptcies have fallen for the first time in a year.
Figures released showed a 6.7% drop in the number of failures in May from a year earlier.
