The Conference Board, a non-profit tax-exempt global organization who publishes a number of key economic indicators announced this evening Japan’s Leading Economic Index indicator would be updated to see a fall of nearly 3 per cent.

The Leading Economic Index, an aggregate of a number of important economic factors is down almost internationally during this contractionary period of global economic recession. The United States saw its last update in the Index on December 18th, marking a fall of only 0.4 per cent. Mexico is the biggest loser of the larger countries at a fall of nearly 6 per cent (as of December 22nd).

The publishers, who are internationally respected for their economic veracity rationalized the change charting negative factors including the index of overtime worked, real operating profits, and estimated purchases for machinery.

One of the largest factors in Japan’s LEI value is that of the Tankan Performance Survey which reported last month that business confidence in Japan hit record lows.

“The data series used to compute The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for Japan and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index (CEI) for Japan reported in this release are those available ‘as of’ 5:00 P.M. ET January 7, 2009.” told the report, finishing to say that the next update would be on February 5th.

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