Japan’s PMI Manufacturing for April was finalized at 49.5, marginally above March’s 49.2, marking the sixth consecutive month of contraction in the sector. Jibun Bank noted that new order volumes displayed further signs of stabilization, while output charges experienced their strongest rise in five months. Additionally, input delivery times only lengthened slightly.
Usamah Bhatti, an economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, commented that the Japanese manufacturing sector remained in contraction territory at the start of Q2 2023. However, the rate of deterioration eased to the softest in the current six-month sequence, primarily due to the slowest reduction in new order inflows since July of last year.
Bhatti further observed that firms reported supply chains continued on the path to normalization, with the softest lengthening in delivery times in the current 39-month sequence. Inflationary pressures remained historically high, but manufacturers signaled that input prices rose at the softest pace since August 2021. To protect profit margins, firms increasingly passed higher cost burdens onto customers, resulting in charge inflation accelerating to a five-month high.
