FX.co ★ Japan Data On Tap For Tuesday

Japan is set to unveil substantial data on Tuesday, marking a hectic day for Asia-Pacific's economic portfolio. The data will cover the unemployment rate, industrial production, retail sales, construction orders, and housing starts for March.

The unemployment rate is projected to decrease slightly from 2.6% in February to 2.5% in March. The ratio of job-seekers to job-vacancies is predicted to remain stagnant at 1.26. Industrial output, on the other hand, is expected to rebound by a 3.4% surge on a month-on-month analysis after a slight setback of 0.6% a month earlier.

Given that retail sales had escalated by 4.7% in the previous month, the predicted growth rate of 2.5% year-on-year in March is somewhat modest. Another sector facing a decrease is housing starts, with a potentially steeper annual downturn of 7.6% after an 8.2% fall the previous month. February's construction orders had seen an unfortunate annual dip of 11%.

Moving to Australia, the economic data for housing credit and retail sales in March is due to be released. The credit is likely to marginally increase by 0.3% on a month-to-month basis, a subtle slump from February's 0.4% rate. Sales might show an even slower pace with a mere 0.2% monthly increase after a 0.3% hike the month before.

China's April data will include statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics on manufacturing, non-manufacturing, and composite indexes. The March figures for these were 50.8, 53.0, and 52.7 respectively.

Thailand is due to provide March's data on its industrial production and current account. In February, industrial production declined by 2.84% year-on-year, while the current account surplus stood at $2 billion.

Preliminary Q1 gross domestic product data will be provided by Taiwan, where growth of 4.93% was recorded in the final quarter of the previous year.

Lastly, South Korea is slated to release March data for industrial production and retail sales. In February, despite a 3.1% increase in industrial production month-to-month and a 4.8% year-on-year increase, retail sales had a setback of 3.1%.