Firms think little of government statistics, questionnaire shows
Japan Times / Nov 22
...the Cabinet Office's quarterly estimates of gross domestic product, the Finance Ministry's report on corporate activity, and the "tankan" survey by the Bank of Japan are widely known. But there are many other economic statistics that are compiled by government ministries and agencies, and not all of them are useful....
...Keidanren selected 72 government statistics that serve as short-term economic indicators and asked its members how much they use them in their operations and what they think of such data.
Each set of statistics was given a grade from 0 to 100, and any that were used by all the surveyed firms received a full 100 points. Those that were ignored by all of the firms got 0 points. As it turns out, many of the statistics received a score of between 15 and 35 points, while the average score was 38.8 points.