Japan: Consumer confidence continues to decline in April
Consumer sentiment declined from 40.5 in March to 40.4 in April. The print represented the lowest reading since February 2016 and was a notch above the 40.3 expected by market analysts. The consumer confidence index measures consumers’ expectations for the next six months on a scale of 0–100; a figure of 100 indicates that all respondents see their living standards improving.
Consumers were noticeably more pessimistic about their willingness to buy durable goods, while income growth posted a small decline. Conversely, the overall livelihood category and job prospects posted remarkable gains in April. Regarding prices, expectations of higher prices rose slightly in April, with 87.7% of respondents expecting prices to trend higher (up 1.3 percentage points from last month’s survey).