Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

    TOKYO, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japan's core private-sector machinery orders in October fell a seasonally adjusted 4.4 percent from the previous month to 899.7 billion yen (9.67 billion U.S. dollars), the government said Wednesday.

    The reading, a key gauge for corporate capital spending, represented an unadjusted 15.5 percent decline from a year earlier, the Cabinet Office said.

    The official figure was in line with earlier market predictions, which was around 4.5 percent.

    The core orders exclude those for ships and from electric power companies as they tend to vary widely due to their large size.

    The decline came after companies cut back their spending on new investment in response to the global economic downturn.