Yes it is. The motor has inductive reactance and the cap offers offestting capacitive reactance.
The current is lagging due to the inductive reactance of the motor and the capacitor adds capacitive reactance offsetting the "wasted" inductive currents.
This phase shift is what lowers the power factor of the induction motor.
This happens for all induction motors. In industrial plants this phantom current is pretty significant. You have measured current or amps, but if you had measured power with a wattmeter you would not see a difference with the cap or not. This difference in real power and apparent power is again power factor.
All of the current handling components have to handle current both real and reactive either inductive or capacitive.
The power company will charge for this reactive currents along with the real power in watts.
This would be either a power factor penalty or other means.
These currents also cause heating of components so it is best to correct near the source, but usually more expensive than correcting in a big lump in one place in the power system.