Japan's capital spending rises 6.4 pct on year in Q1

TOKYO, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Capital spending by Japanese companies in the first quarter of 2025 rose 6.4 percent from a year earlier, rebounding from a slight decline in the previous quarter, government data showed on Monday.

Investment by all nonfinancial sectors for purposes such as building factories and adding equipment came to a record 18.80 trillion yen (about 130.6 billion U.S. dollars), Ministry of Finance data showed.

Capital spending, one of the key gauges of the country's economic growth, rebounded from the previous quarter's 0.2 percent fall, the first quarterly fall in nearly four years.

Corporate sales rose 4.3 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to a record 404.23 trillion yen, gaining for the 16th consecutive quarter, while pretax profits increased 3.8 percent to 28.47 trillion yen.

The solid expenditure data will be used to calculate revised gross domestic product figures for the January-March period, which showed Japan's economy shrank an annualized real 0.7 percent, the first contraction in four quarters. Enditem