Proposals for a $50 billion budget to help finance to the reconstruction in Japan, including the construction of 100,000 temporary homes has provided a timely boost to manufacturers.
Share prices have fluctuated wildly on the country’s exchanges this week, as Japan’s company release their quarterly results and manufacturers like Toyota, Honda and Komatsu have begun to release details of how their production was hit by the 11 March tsunami disaster.
Komatsu has posted an operating profit of $738.5 million today for Q1 almost double on last year. It also revealed that the factories it shut after the quake were back up and running normally and that it had enough inventory of parts to get through the next quarter.
Komatsu has seen its share price increase by 10% since the disaster, way ahead of a Nikki average fall of 6% with investors predicting that it will be a major beneficiary of the rebuilding process.
“It is unclear how much rebuilding-related demand there will be and we have not incorporated any into our forecast. We are looking for domestic demand to be flat year-on-year,” Chief Financial Officer Mikio Fujitsuka told a briefing.
Meanwhile Toyota and Honda Motor Co revealed that domestic production in March plummeted about 63% from the previous year after the disaster.
Honda production fell 62.9% to 34,754 units in March. Toyota, which resumed manufacturing operations at all domestic plants on 18 April, said domestic production fell 62.7% to 129,491 units, the lowest rate since 1976. It expects that output levels will continue to splutter and will be 50% of normal for the foreseeable future.
Â
