TOKYO – Japanese manufacturers’ sentiments improved for the first time in three years, a quarterly Bank of Japan survey showed Thursday, as the nation grappled with stagnation worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.
The headline measure for the “tankan,” tracking sentiment among large manufacturers, stood at minus 27, an improvement of seven points from the previous survey that came out in July.
The tankan measures corporate sentiment by subtracting the number of companies saying business conditions are negative from those responding they are positive.That measure had declined for six quarters straight, to an 11-year low, before Thursday’s report.