The Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey is due for release on October 1, and this release is going to be more closely watched than ever as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has indicated it is the last piece of data he’ll need before he makes his decision and announcement on the scheduled sales tax hike due in April of 2014.
I suspect his decision to proceed with the hike (from a current level of 5% to 8% in April 2014) is made already … but maybe it is ‘data dependent’ on the BOJ Tankan.
Surveys of economists have the major manufacturers diffusion index (this measures sentiment and is the ‘headline number’ from the survey) expected is rise to 8 in the three months to September, from +4 in the previous survey.
More details.