As the recent Tankan (Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan) indicates, corporate managers are increasingly feeling shortages of production capacity and labor, while a positive output gap suggests that demand currently exceeds supply in the economy as a whole. Since autumn last year, upward movement in the CPI has been subdued partly because of sluggish growth in private consumption and wages.
However, the CPI is expected to resume a moderate upward trend as the effects of the drop in crude oil prices fade out.