Japan Consumer Price Data Due On Friday

(RTTNews) - Japan will on Friday release February figures for nationwide consumer prices, highlighting a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity.

Overall inflation is tipped to add 0.3 percent on year, up from 0.2 percent in January. Core CPI, which excludes volatile food prices, is called steady at 0.8 percent.

Japan also will see preliminary March numbers for the manufacturing PMI from Nikkei, as well as final January results for its leading and coincident indexes and February data for supermarket and department store sales.

The manufacturing PMI had a score of 48.9 in February, while the previous readings for the leading and coincident indexes were 95.9 and 97.9, respectively. Supermarket sales were down 3.4 percent on year in January, while department store sales slid an annual 2.9 percent.

Hong Kong will provide Q4 data for current account; in the three months prior, the current account surplus was HKD45.77 billion and the financial account showed a deficit of HKD27.34 billion.

Malaysia will release February numbers for consumer prices; in January, inflation was down 0.5 percent on month and 0.7 percent on year.