Pound Sterling to Japanese yen (GBP/JPY) Exchange Rate softer after Japanese data release

During Asian trading the Pound softened against the Japanese Yen after a wealth of economic data offered support the Asian currency.

The data which included the latest core CPI, inflation rate, household spending, unemployment, and retail sales data broadly hinted that the Japanese economy was slowly improving.

The Yen was also able to benefit from yesterday’s softer-than-expected data out of the USA and demand for safe havens as investors remained concerned over the situations in Iraq and Ukraine.

The consumer price inflation data for May came in as expected with a year-on-year gain of 3.4%, the rise marked the twelfth consecutive increase and was the biggest gain seen since the 3.5% increase recorded way back in April 1982.

The introduction a new sales-tax increase was thought to have contributed to the biggest slide in household spending since the 2011 Japanese earthquake.

A report showed that household spending on a year-on-year basis fell much sharper than expected in May. Economists had been expecting a fall of -4.6%, instead the data showed that spending plummeted by -8.0%.

“The bigger than forecast drop in spending indicates that households are starting to struggle with faster inflation coupled with the sales-tax hike, it’s hard to imagine households are happy with Abenomics,” said the director of economic research at NLI Reserach Institute in Tokyo.

Retail sales meanwhile fell by 0.4% last month less-than the expected decline of 1.8% painting a mixed picture over consumer buying.

Adding to the positive side of the data releases was the report which showed that Japan’s unemployment rate declined to 3.5% in May. The figure beat forecasts for an unchanged figure of 3.6%.

The number of unemployed persons in May was 2.42 million, a decrease of 370,000 or 13.3% on year.

Current Japanese Yen (JPY) Exchange Rates:

[table width=”100%” colwidth=”50|50|50|50|50″ colalign=”left|left|left|left|left”]
Currency, ,Currency,Rate ,
Pound Sterling,,Japanese Yen,172.6470 ,
Euro,,Japanese Yen,138.1240 ,
US Dollar,,Japanese Yen,101.4200 ,
Australian Dollar,,Japanese Yen,95.5673 ,
[/table]