TOKYO: Japan’s core private-sector machinery orders dropped 3.1 percent in April from a month earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, the government said in a report on Monday. According to the Cabinet Office, overall orders were dragged down by a decline in finance and insurance, and construction-linked orders, and April marked the first time in three months that orders had retreated. April’s reading follows core machinery orders rising 1.4 percent in March, according to the Cabinet Office. The latest figures showed that the orders, which exclude those for ships and from utilities because of their volatility, stood at 835.9 billion yen (7.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the recording period. Despite the latest decline, the Cabinet Office maintained its basic assessment that the recovery in machinery orders has slowed. Non-manufacturing orders declined 5.0 percent to 471.5 billion yen, the government’s data showed, marking the second consecutive monthly decline, while orders from the manufacturing sector increased 2.5 percent to 361.8 billion yen, rising for a third straight month in the recording period, the Cabinet Office said. Demand for Japanese machinery from overseas markets, a barometer of future exports, jumped 17.4 percent to 993.2 billion yen, the data showed, and total orders, including both domestic public sector and overseas ones, increased 2.7 percent at 2.3 trillion yen, the Cabinet Office said. Machinery orders are expected to retreat however by 5.9 percent from the current quarter through June, compared to the previous quarter, the office said. Japan’s machinery orders are a key advance indicator for corporate capital spending and the government uses the data to predict the strength of business spending in a six to nine-month period ahead. Such business investment accounts for around 15 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product and analysts said Monday that they expect capital spending to stay between low and moderate owing to Japan’s economic recovery still being somewhat listless.