The September Tankan showed that an increasing number of firms in a wide range of industries answered that their output prices had risen compared with three months ago. Retailers are considered to have a strong influence on consumer prices, and the number of retailers expecting a rise in output prices exceeded the number expecting a fall.
According to the most recent issue of the Opinion Survey on the General Public's Views and Behavior, which is conducted by the Bank's Public Relations Department and covers a nationwide sample of 4,000 individuals, about 60 percent of respondents felt that prices had risen from a year earlier, and about 80 percent of respondents expected prices to rise in the one-year period ahead. III.