During an economic recovery, it often happens that disparities in business performance between companies that are doing better and those that are not become more apparent. That is the case with Japanese companies today, as shown clearly by the Bank of Japan's latest survey of business sentiment. While goods producers are recovering, service providers continue to stagnate.
The quarterly "tankan" survey, released Wednesday, finds that business sentiment among large manufacturers turned positive, though slightly, in September for the first time in 33 months. By contrast, the mood among nonmanufacturers, large and small, remained negative by a wide margin, although it improved somewhat. The overall outlook for three months ahead, involving large, midsize and small companies in all sectors, also improved slightly.
The September tankan is yet another reminder that Japan's economy is getting out of its prolonged slump and beginning to turn upward. Signs of recovery are also discernible in the recent surge of the Nikkei stock average to the 10,000-point level, the robust expansion of gross domestic product in the April-June quarter, and a decline in the unemployment rate.