Latest data released by METI - 23 September 2020
- Prior +6.1%
Slight delay in the release by the source. The data is often referred to as the monthly GDP reading, it's a tracker production across all sectors of the Japanese economy and follows the GDP growth figures/trend.
Economic activity show some modest improvement to start Q3 but there are still question marks surrounding how sustainable all of this is going into the latter stages of the year.
That said, relative to last year, the index is down by 10.6% y/y so that sort of gives an indication of how the economy is performing relative to pre-virus levels.
The good news for Japan is that the virus situation is starting to improve after a scare in July to mid-August so we'll have to wait and see how that has impacted consumer demand.
