Hope for recovery in Asian economies is on the rise, with some analysts seeing the region, and especially its emerging markets, showing signs of improvement.
But the one exception looks to be Japan, where evidence of a turnaround is mixed at best.
As if to demonstrate the point, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 Average was Monday's sole major regional index to post a loss by the close of the East Asian markets.
The Nikkei 225 Average retreated from an earlier high above the psychologically important 9,000 level to close 0.4% lower - or 39.68 points - at 8,924.43.
"Things couldn't get much worse," Kyohei Morita, chief Japan economist at Barclays Capital, told clients in a note, referring to Japan.
Morita said industrial production in Japan, which was already down 12% quarter-over-quarter in the last three months of 2008, looks set to plunge 23.2% in the first quarter of 2009.
Morita said he expected the core machinery orders data to confirm his expectations for the decline.
His projection contrasts with the February private-sector core machinery orders, which saw a seasonally adjusted 1.4% rise from the previous month, the Cabinet Office reported last week. Those results marked a much better-than-expected showing for the leading indicator.
"Despite the rebound, private investment will likely contract sharply in 1Q 2009," Peck Boon Soon, an analyst at RHB Research Institute, wrote in a recent research note. "This will likely contribute to a sharp decline in the Japanese economy during the quarter."
Year over year, Japanese private-sector core machinery orders -- which exclude some volatile machine segments -- fell by 30.1% in February, the Cabinet Office said.
That marked the eighth month in a row of on-year declines, "suggesting that private investment is likely to fall sharply in line with almost a 50% drop in exports in recent months," said Soon.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan said Monday that the nation's Corporate Goods Price Index, a measure of prices paid by businesses, fell 2.2% in March from a year earlier.
The fall represented the largest such drop since May 2002, according to Dow Jones Newswires, and was bigger than market expectations for a 1.7% decline reported in a Kyodo News survey.
Still, recent steps toward recovery may help Japan catch up with the level of optimism surrounding other Asian economies.
Japan's government unveiled a package of spending and tax reductions valued at 15.4 trillion yen ($154-billion U.S.) on Friday, aimed at rescuing the nation's economy from the biggest slump since World War II.
And "the agreement at the Group of 20 meeting to commit $250 billion (U.S) for trade finance is positive news for Japan, given that a lack of funding has been an important factor behind the extreme weakness in exports," said an expert from Barclays Capital.
Elsewhere:
China’s Shanghai 300 Composite Index picked up 60.99 points, or 2.4%, to end the day at 2,656.52
Singapore’s Straits Times Index gained 48.26 points, or 2.6% to 1,876.77
South Korea’s Kospi Composite Index edged ahead 2.22 points, or 0.2%, to 1,338.26
Taiwan’s Taiex Index surged 75.68 points, or 1.3%, to 5,857.64
Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australian markets were off for a holiday.
