We believe there is already growth in Japan’s real exports, but readers needto descend into the murky world of data quality. The MOF produces monthlytrade statistics, which include a quantum index, the MOF estimate of real exportgrowth i.e. export volume growth.
Perhaps reflecting the monetary policy need for high confidence in month tomonth data, the BOJ takes the raw MOF data and produces its own exportvolume growth series. This is released the afternoon of the day the MOF releasecomes out.
Over long periods, the data, the lines appear to move together. However, andcritically, over the short periods, there are material divergences.
Above, we present the MOF and BOJ real/volume data for total exports. Similarcharts by region for the US, Europe, China and ASEAN are on page 11. Theseshow that the relative strength in the BOJ series is to the US and the EU, whilstthe data is very similar to China and ASEAN.
Looking at the BOJ data above, Japan’s real export growth appears to havefaded through 2015, become negative at the start of 2016, before returning topositive growth, quite strong in YoY terms, over May, June and July.
A strong link to the global industrial recovery: Some investors, whilstunderstanding that most of Japan’s leading industrial companies are MNCs andthat the Japanese stock market moves as a ‘global cyclical’, wish to see a stronglinkage to the global industrial recovery story through positive Japanese exportvolume growth.
Whilst monthly trade numbers are volatile, we expect the August trade data willconfirm the growth underway to the US and EU.
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