Japan's key machinery orders dropped a seasonally-adjusted 7.1 percent in December from a month earlier to 733.2 billion yen (9.5 billion U.S. dollars), marking the first decline in two months, affected by weakness in some technology sectors, a Cabinet Office report showed on Thursday.

The government's figure for December, the core private-sector orders, made a reduction after a strong growth of 14.8 percent in November, faster than expected. Orders from the manufacturing sectors fell 7.1 percent to 314.2 billion yen (4.07 billion U.S. dollars), electric machinery makers fell 19.8 percent, leading a wider decline in the technology sectors.

General machinery makers observed a 5.5 percent fall while telecommunications equipment manufacturers logged an 18.2 percent decline.

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.