Japanese manufacturers’ sentiment falls amid global risks – Reuters Tankan | So Good News

Tokyo Nov 9 (Reuters) – Optimism about Japan’s manufacturing fell to a 22-month low in November, while service sector sentiment brightened to a three-year high, a Reuters Tankan survey showed, highlighting the fragility and unevenness of Japan’s post-war period. COVID recovery.

The monthly survey, which tracks the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) closely watched Tanan quarterly survey, showed that manufacturers expect their business conditions to improve over the next three months. Respondents in the service sector were found to expect little change.

The mixed results highlighted the challenge for policymakers to sustain the recovery. Economists forecast a sharp slowdown in the third quarter of the world’s number three economy as the weaker yen pushed higher living costs and raised the risk of a global recession.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has put together a second supplementary budget with 29.1 trillion yen ($198 billion) worth of stimulus spending to help households and businesses cope with rising costs. But critics say the extra spending could do more harm than good as it relies on extended borrowing from one of the industrialized world’s most heavily indebted countries.

A Reuters poll of 247 companies, which spoke on condition of anonymity, said many spoke of the risks of chip shortages and overseas risk taking as the yen’s weakness raises import costs and weighs on auto output. The war in Ukraine.

“Rising crude oil and steel costs on top of the Ukraine crisis and the escalating US-China trade conflict have made our clients cautious about capital spending,” wrote a manager at a machinery firm on condition of anonymity.

“A slow and prolonged decline in China’s auto production due to chip shortages and high steel and energy inputs could prevent sales from increasing profits,” a manager at another machinery maker wrote in the survey.

A sentiment index for manufacturers stood at plus 2, down from the previous month’s plus 5 and the lowest reading since the minus 1 seen in January 2021, according to the survey conducted from Oct. 25 to Nov. 4. The index is expected to recover. to plus 7 in February after a third straight month of declines in November.

The service sector index rose five points to plus 20, the best reading since the plus 25 registered in October 2019 before the pandemic hit, it said. The index is expected to slip from one point to plus 19 over the next three months.

Reuters Tankan indices are calculated by subtracting the percentage of pessimistic respondents from the optimistic ones. A positive number means that optimists outnumber pessimists.

(1 dollar = 146,7600 yen)

Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Edited by Bradley Perrett.

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.