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The Japanese government announced Monday that the nation's current account -- Japan's broadest measure of trade with the rest of the world -- logged a September surplus of 587.3 billion yen, marking the eighth straight month of black ink.
The figure was an increase of 14.3% over the previous year.
Japan has earned hefty returns from decades of investments overseas, making up for a tepid export picture and surging energy import costs.
© (c) 2013 AFP
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Kuribo1
good for Japan!
Get Real
Reasons to be cheerful. Some investment in renewables, please.
wtfjapan
comon if anybody thinks these figures are accurate and the Jgov is not manipulating the figures, then your sadly mistaken. cant wait until the 8% tax hits hard in April, will be very interesting how they change the figures to make the slump look better than it will be. LOL
kchoze
Exports seem to be doing well actually, around 6 000 billion yen each month since Abenomics started, whereas it hovered between 4 900 and 5 400 billion yens before (going by the treading economics website). The problem is that the price of fuel is up, and with most nuclear plants shut down, Japan is importing lots of fuel. Still, it means good things for Japanese manufacturing, as it means they're more profitable and more likely to invest in Japan.
kurisupisu
Why should foreigners invest in Japan when the Japanese themselves are not????
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/asahi-to-ajinomoto-ceos-betting-abenomics-won-t-spur-inflation.html
CH3CHO
kurisupisuNov. 11, 2013 - 04:00PM JST
They shouldn't. Japan is by far the largest net creditor nation in the world. The last thing Japan needs is foreign investments into Japan. If they invest into Japan, the Yen goes up against foreign currencies and domestic interest rates go down. Both moves are not welcome.
Guru29
According to both Bloomberg news and WSJ, the surplus is actually a deficit of 125.2 billion yen after seasonal adjustment, a record low for data stretching back to 1996.
As what WSJ says:
"The sharp weakening of the yen, sparked by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy of aggressive monetary easing, has prompted some Japanese companies to repatriate reserved profits at foreign subsidiaries back to Japan, in what is seen as a window-dressing move. Such transactions have lifted the nation's income balance—thus the current account—in recent months, including March and September. But these are only one-off developments that won't permanently improve the balance."
wtfjapan
587.3 billion yen hey, well thats about 0.0006% off the Japanese debt, fair way to go before thats paid off id say.
kurisupisu
In other words no benefit for the Japanese people.......