Good news from Japan again

摘要

Demand continues to improve in the Japanese domes-tic market. Orders for July, published at the end of September, showed advances on almost all sectors of the home front compared with July last year. Overall, volumes were nearly 6 percent up, 4.7m tonnes compared with 4.4m tonnes in 1999. Carmakers' orders were 10.6 percent ahead at 808,000 tonnes, shipyards ordered 265,000 tonnes, 11.2 percent more than last year. Direct orders from the construction industry were up by 5.4 percent, to 1.2m tonnes, and dealers, most of whose customers are in the construction sector, ordered a total of 1.6m tonnes, 2.2 percent more than twelve months before.