【英文】J.P. 摩根报告：2020上半年已崩，全球宏观数据观察报告（82页）

英文研究报告 2020年04月22日 07:08 管理员

The trend increase in ODI outflows reflected a shift in Japanese firms’ business operations, with both production and sales increasingly conducted overseas. Indeed, Japanese firms’ overseas sales and production as shares of total sales and production remained broadly stable before 2011, but have risen since 2012, after exporters suffered consecutive years of sharp Yen appreciation following the GFC. Japanese corporations’ overseas sales ratio rose about 5%-pts from 2011 to 2015, and the production ratio about 4%-pts. However, in line with the gradual stabilization of the underlying trend in Japan’s ODI outflows, the overseas sales ratio has leveled off in recent years, while the production ratio has continued to rise (Figure 3). As a result, the gap between the overseas sales and production ratios has narrowed substantially in recent years, reducing transportation costs as well as potential risks from currency mismatches. Incentives to invest abroad have also changed. While low labor costs and supply-chain build-ups among Japanese firms were the key catalysts for overseas investment in the past, the recent trend increase in ODI almost exclusively reflects a desire to meet local demand in target countries and regions.

In a survey conducted by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), about 70% of respondents pointed to demand in the local market and 30% to the broader region of the targeted country, as the key factor affecting their investment decision (Figure 4). On the flip side, the share of companies investing overseas to lower labor costs declined from about half in 2004 to less than 20% in 2017. With stronger interest in local demand, firms are increasingly setting up production and sales bases in the same offshore location, allowing their operations to be independent of financing from Japan. Subsiding outflows That said, firms also have become less aggressive in their outward investment. The percentage of Japanese companies intending to expand their overseas operations gradually has decreased, after hitting a decade peak in 2011 (Figure 5). Indeed, in 2019, 71.4% of companies were willing to expand overseas operations, the lowest since 2001, except for 2009, a year after the GFC. While the majority of firms likely will continue expanding their overseas operations, they have gradually lost their eagerness to do so, compared to the past.