Japan's exports jumped 37.9 percent to 33.0968 trillion yen (about $380 billion) in the first half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to preliminary figures released Monday by the Finance Ministry.
The increase was the second largest on record for a half-year period, ministry officials said, only bettered by a jump in the first half of 1980. Exports to Asia rose 46.4 percent, the largest increase ever. Sales of cars and semiconductors to Asian countries, especially China, were particularly strong.
Imports rose 23.3 percent to 29.6959 trillion yen. The trade balance, the value of exports minus imports, was 3.4009 trillion yen in surplus. The monthly trade surplus stood at 687 billion yen in June, up 41.1 percent from the same month last year. It was the 15th consecutive month of trade surplus.
Source : The Asahi Shimbun July 27
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. unit Sega Corp. and other major game companies hope to make a splash in the Asian market with online offerings, especially as market growth for home consoles stagnates in Japan, Europe and the U.S.
Sega and KT Hitel are jointly developing a Korean language version of Sega's "Football Manager" game, Internet use in Asia has exploded, opening the door for new business opportunities among game firms. Because the pirating of game software titles is still rampant in Asia, Japanese companies will focus on providing online content, which is less vulnerable to unauthorized use owing to its distribution through secure servers.
Sega has inked a licensing agreement with online game distributor KT Hitel Co., a subsidiary of South Korean telecommunications giant KT Corp. The duo are jointly developing a Korean language version of Sega's "Football Manager" game, which is currently offered in the U.K. It will be distributed on KT Hitel's online game site around fall 2011. The game will be available for free online, with users being charged to download items as they play.
Sega hopes to expand its sports game offerings in Asia through KT Hitel, which provides content to gaming sites in China and Taiwan. GungHo Online Entertainment Inc. will begin distributing an online role-playing game in China as early as this year through a British Virgin Islands-based firm.
Source : The Nikkei July 29
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Ajinomoto Co. (2802) will enter the U.S. health food market with a proprietary nutritional supplement next month and is seeking to expand into Europe as well.
Partnering with the U.S.-based Center for Medical Weight Loss, or CMWL, Ajinomoto will cultivate the American market, where obesity is a social issue.Ajinomoto already sells its seasonings worldwide. With domestic demand for food slumping, it aims to take its health food products abroad.
The supplement containing chili pepper extract comes in tablet form and is said to burn fat. Ajinomoto conducted joint studies with Kyoto University and has patent protection on the product, which was launched in the Japanese market back in 2006. With a month's supply costing about 6,000 yen, annual sales come to several billions of yen. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted its approval following a safety review.
In the U.S., the company will seek sales of 5 billion yen. The product will be made in Japan, shipped to the U.S., and then sold via some 400 medical institutions with which CMWL has teamed up. Marketing channels are expected to be expanded to include drugstores.U.S. sales of supplements are estimated at 2.5 trillion yen a year. Of this, 200 billion yen comes from diet supplements -- about 20 times the corresponding Japanese figure. Ajinomoto is expanding its lineup of health foods, announcing a tie-up earlier this month with U.S.-based Kellogg Co. to develop a cereal containing a chili pepper substance.
In addition, Ajinomoto will look for European partners. It is one of the most globalized Japanese food companies, with overseas sales exceeding 380 billion yen, a third of its total, in the year ended March 31. Its global offerings include its namesake seasonings brand and amino acids used in animal feed.
Source:The Nikkei July 28
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) said Thursday that it has begun talks toward a merger of Ryoshoku Ltd. (7451) and three other food wholesalers under its vast umbrella, a combination that will create Japan's biggest foodstuffs distributor by sales.
Ryoshoku ranked second in the industry in sales in fiscal 2009 with 1.38 trillion yen. The four firms had a total of about 2.21 trillion yen in sales, far more than industry leader Kokubu & Co.'s 1.42 trillion yen.
Mitsubishi aims to unite Ryoshoku, ninth-ranked Meidi-ya Corp., 10th-ranked Food Service Network Co. (FSN) and 15th-ranked San-Esu Inc. sometime next year. How the new company will be organized has yet to be decided, but the plan is for Ryoshoku to form the core and remain listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Mitsubishi and Ryoshoku want to establish a wholesale business that can reap economies of scale and expand faster into China and other foreign markets while keeping domestic retailers supplied with competitive imports.
Ryoshoku, which is half owned by Mitsubishi, has strength in processed foods. The other three firms have complementary strengths: Meidi-ya in alcoholic beverages, FSN in chilled foods and San-Esu in snacks. Mitsubishi holds equity stakes of 100% in FSN, 80% in Meidi-yan and 91% in San-Esu.
The wholesale food market in Japan grew just 1.5% to 14.18 trillion yen in fiscal 2008 and may have slipped into decline last fiscal year. With major retailers carrying more low-priced store-brand items and food makers cutting sales incentives for wholesalers, the industry has been under pressure to consolidate.
Other trading houses have taken steps to strengthen ties with their wholesaling units. Itochu Corp. raised its stake in Nippon Access Inc., which ranks third in the industry in sales, from 69% to more than 90% this spring.
Bigger wholesalers could mean lower prices for consumers. The three-way tug of war over prices between food makers, wholesalers and retailers is likely to create momentum toward consolidation in those industries as well.
Source : The Nikkei July 30
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Nippon Express Co. (9062) early next month will start shipping freight from Japan to southern China and major Southeast Asian countries, taking care of every stage from customs to transport to final destinations.
Preparations have been made to offer the service in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and certain other parts of China. Marketing will be stepped up in August, with service expanding in the fall to inland Chinese cities and other Southeast Asian nations depending on customer needs.
Thailand-bound cargos will, for instance, be forwarded from warehouses in major Japanese cities by sea. After clearing customs, they will be shipped in trucks arranged by Nippon Express to six main destinations, including Bangkok and major industrial parks. This will be much simpler than what businesses normally have to go through when shipping goods to Southeast Asia, where customs and shipping abroad are arranged separately through agents.
Furthermore, Nippon Express's new service will be charged in yen, sparing customers the inconvenience of considering foreign exchange risk in estimating costs.
Source : The Nikkei Business Daily July 30
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Taiwan has concluded business cooperation memorandums with five Japanese companies, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Rakuten Inc. (4755), said Yin Chi-ming, a minister responsible for the island's economy, during his visit to Japan. The move is aimed at taking advantage of the economic cooperation framework agreement that Taiwan concluded with China at the end of June, which lifted a range of bilateral tariffs.
By joining hands with the Japanese firms, Taiwan seeks to develop a business model that will help the two sides better tap the Chinese market. Sony Computer Entertainment will help Taiwan train software developers to come up with Chinese-language games for the PlayStation console. The company believes it will benefit from Taiwanese knowledge of Chinese language, culture and market trends.
Rakuten will facilitate Japanese customers' purchases of Taiwan's tea and food products sold on Taiwan's online shopping sites. The firm aims to link its own sites with those operated in Taiwan. Rakuten plans to enter China's market later this year and hopes the expertise it gains in partnering with Taiwan will help it in China.
Gas sensor maker FIS Inc. plans to expand its sales network for its clog-detecting sensor used in air purifiers. Yin, who was in Japan to drum up foreign investment, did not disclose the names of the other two participating Japanese companies.
Source : The Nikkei Aug. 2
TOKYO (Kyodo)--Average wages at Japanese companies with at least five employees rose 1.5 percent in June from a year earlier to 437,677 yen for the fourth straight month of increase, backed by a recovery in corporate earnings, the labor ministry said Monday. Amid a trend toward corporate recovery, overtime pay climbed 11.6 percent to 17,587 yen, while summer bonuses and other special payments rose 3.3 percent to 173,851, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.
But scheduled pay, including basic salaries, dipped 0.2 percent to 246,239 yen for the 23rd consecutive month of fall as companies continue to restrict scheduled pay in the face of uncertainty over the economic outlook. Overtime working hours increased 9.2 percent to 9.6 hours in the reporting month, according to the report. Overtime in the manufacturing sector, an important economic indicator, surged 43.7 percent to 13.5 hours.
The number of regular employees increased 0.2 percent to 44,198,000, the ministry said.Average wages for May fell 0.2 percent in a preliminary report released in June, but they have been revised up to a 0.1 percent rise.
Source : The Nikkei Saturday, July 31, 2010
TOKYO (Nikkei)--The Japanese economy steadily grew in the April-June quarter on the back of rising exports and capital investment, according to a survey of 10 private-sector economists.Gross domestic product for the quarter rose 0.7% from the January-March period, or an annualized 2.6%, based on their average estimate.
The economy enjoyed annualized growth of 5% in the first three months of 2010. Even with the slower pace of growth in the April-June period, this would mark the fifth straight quarter of expansion. Exports appear to have driven growth last quarter, with the economists estimating a 6.7% increase, nearly matching the 6.9% gain in the January-March period. External demand -- defined as exports minus imports -- likely pushed up GDP growth for the quarter by 0.5 point.
“Burgeoning exports underpinned the Japanese economy," says Itochu Corp.'s Yasunori Miwa.The increase in exports stoked production, which in turn spurred corporate investments. The economists forecast that capital spending rose 1.3% on the quarter, a bigger gain than in the January-March period.
Meanwhile, consumer spending likely lost momentum as government measures expire, with half of the economists estimating a drop in the April-June quarter. Public works spending likely declined at a greater clip, undercutting GDP. Whether exports can remain strong will be a key question going forward.
Yoshiki Shinke, senior economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, says the Japanese economy may hit a lull in the July-September quarter, citing a slowdown in China's growth. But NLI Research Institute senior economist Taro Saito predicts that the uptrend in exports will continue as emerging economies keep expanding.
Source : The Nikkei July 31 morning edition)
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Production of cars, trucks and buses in Japan increased 25.9% from a year earlier in June, rising for the eighth consecutive month, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said Friday.
Vehicle output rose to 861,045 vehicles in June, up from 683,922 vehicles in the same month a year earlier, the association said. Domestic vehicle demand totaled 448,831, up 17.4%.
In the January-June period, overall auto production rose 45.8% to 4.84 million vehicles, the first on-year increase for the six-month period in two years.
Source : The Nikkei July 30
The Office of Commercial Affairs, Royal Thai Embassy in Tokyo, Japan
Source : http://www.depthai.go.th