Japan Data On Tap For Friday

(RTTNews) - Japan is scheduled to release a batch of data on Friday, headlining a busy day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. On tap are August figures for unemployment, industrial production, retail sales, housing starts and construction orders, as well as September results for its consumer confidence index.

The unemployment rate is expected to ease to 2.5 percent from 2.6 percent in July, with the jobs-to-applicant ratio improving to 1.30 from 1.29. Industrial production is tipped to add 0.2 percent on month and fall 1.0 percent on year after rising 0.8 percent on month and easing 1.8 percent on year in the previous month.

Retail sales were up 0.8 percent on month and 2.4 percent on year in July, while housing starts dropped an annual 5.4 percent and construction orders rose 2.8 percent on year. The consumer confidence index had a score of 32.5 in August.

New Zealand will provide August figures for building permits; in July, permits jumped 5.0 percent on month.

Australia will see August numbers for private sector credit; in July, credit was up 0.7 percent on month and 9.1 percent on year.

South Korea will release August data for industrial production and retail sales. Industrial production is forecast to have slipped 0.5 percent on month and gained 1.3 percent on year after shedding 1.3 percent on month and rising 1.5 percent on year in July. Retail sales were down 0.3 percent on month and 1.9 percent on year in July.

China will see September results for the manufacturing, non-manufacturing and composite PMIs from the National Bureau of Statistics, as well as the manufacturing PMI from Caixin. In August, the NBS manufacturing index had a score of 49.4, the non-manufacturing index was at 52.6 and the composite was at 51.7. The Caixin manufacturing index had a score of 49.5 in the previous month.

Hong Kong will provide August numbers for retail sales; in July, sales were up 1.0 percent on year.

Thailand will release August data for current account, retail sales and its coincident index. In July, the current account deficit was $4.1 billion, retail sales climbed an annual 12.1 percent and the coincident index score was 128.65.