Core private-sector machinery orders fell a seasonally adjusted 9.6 percent in February from January for the first dip in three months, but the decline is largely a reaction to gains of 12.2 percent over the previous two months, the government said Wednesday.
The Cabinet Office's Economic and Social Research Institute maintained its upbeat opinion of the key early gauge of corporate capital spending, saying there are "signs of improvement" in machinery orders and that capital spending may pick up in the future.
Core private-sector machinery orders amounted to 842.1 billion yen in February, which represented an unadjusted 1.4 percent increase from a year earlier and the second straight month of yearly rise.