Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025
0850 JST (2350 GMT/1850 EST Tuesday, Dec. 16) The Cabinet Office releases October machinery orders.
Mace News median: core orders -2.6% m/m (range: -5.0% to +2.7%) vs. Sept +4.2%; +3.6% y/y (range: +0.6% to +9.1%) vs. Sept +11.6%
By Chikafumi Hodo
TOKYO (MaceNews) – Japan’s core machinery orders, a key leading indicator of business investment in equipment and software, are expected to return to a downward path in October, as the impact of a major one-off order from the chemical industry in the previous month fades.
Core machinery orders are expected to fall 2.6% on the month in October, after posting their first month-on-month increase in three months in September, when they rose a solid 4.2%. The September rise reflected firms’ ongoing need to upgrade and digitize factories, offices, and retail outlets amid widespread labor shortages. It followed a 0.9% drop in August and a 4.6% plunge in July.
Capital investment appetite remains firm in some areas, as suggested by domestic shipments of capital goods, excluding transport equipment, and machine tool orders, both of which showed positive growth in the separate October industrial production data released in late November.
Still, lingering uncertainty over global growth, hit by U.S. trade policy, as well as sluggish domestic demand in the face of sticky inflation, continues to weigh on the outlook. This led the Cabinet Office to maintain its view on machinery orders after downgrading it in August for the first time since the May 2024 report. Since then, it has assessed that the pickup in machinery orders is “stalling,” compared with its previous view that orders were “showing signs of a pickup.”
On a year-on-year basis, core orders excluding those from electric utilities and for ships are projected to rise 3.6%, which would mark the 13th straight month of increase, after jumping 11.6% in September and sharply beating the median economist forecast of a 7.6% rise.