Capital investment planned by Japanese firms for the year to March 2008 will rise an average of 11.0 percent from a year earlier, the fourth straight year of double-digit growth, reports said Sunday. The Nikkei business daily carried out the survey covering revised investment plans at 1,695 companies.
The 11 percent increase in capital spending would mark the fifth-straight year of expansion, the longest uninterrupted stretch of growth since the five years to March 1992, when Japan was in an asset bubble, the daily said.
Japanese firms across a wide range of sectors are still bullish on capital spending despite emerging concerns about the economic outlook due to the US subprime crisis, the newspaper said.
Non-manufacturers plan to boost capital outlays by 14.8 percent, the biggest year-on-year increase since the year to March 1981, when the figure hit 14.9 percent, it said.
Manufacturers plan to spend 8.7 percent more for the year to March 2008 with capital outlays in the automobile and electronics industries expected to expand around six percent.
Although the overall growth in the manufacturing sector is smaller than the 13.5 percent expansion seen the previous year, capital investment remains strong in key industries such as the materials sector, which expects an 11.7 percent increase, the daily said.