Japan August machinery orders fall 1.9% m/m, worse than expected

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's core machinery orders fell 1.9% in August from the previous month, down for two straight months and the drop was bigger than expected, government data showed on Wednesday.

That compared with a 0.1% decline expected by economists in a Reuters poll.

On a year-on-year basis, core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as a leading indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, fell 3.4%, versus a forecast for 3.6% growth, the Cabinet Office data showed.

By sector, core orders from manufacturers declined 2.5% month-on-month in August, while those from non-manufacturers dropped 7.7% in the same period.

The Cabinet Office left its assessment of machinery orders unchanged, saying the recovery was pausing.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jacqueline Wong)