Private-sector machinery orders received by manufacturers increased a seasonally adjusted 10.8 percent in November from the previous month to 876.5 billion yen, the Economic Planning Agency said Monday.
The core orders are considered an early indicator of trends in corporate capital spending over the following six to nine months. Orders for ships and those placed by electric power companies are excluded from the compilation because they tend to fluctuate wildly and skew the statistics.
Compared with a year earlier core orders declined an unadjusted 12.2 percent, the agency said. However, against the previous month, they rose, with both the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors placing orders actively, it said.
Orders from manufacturers came to 341.9 billion yen, up 3.6 percent from the previous month, while those from nonmanufacturers — excluding ships and utilities — surged 13.8 percent to 536.3 billion yen.