Recently, private consumption has continued to be lackluster after weatherrelated factors that affected consumption in the winter have dissipated.
In addition, production activity, which has recently been more or less flat or weaker due to the effects of the slowdown in emerging economies, including China, and commodity-exporting economies and of an accident at a steel plant, is showing some weakness, mainly in the transportation equipment sector, whose supply chains have been disrupted by the damage caused mainly in Kumamoto Prefecture by the earthquake.