MADRID, 10 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has decided to keep its monetary and stimulus policy unchanged at the last meeting of the institution under the presidency of Haruhiko Kuroda, who will step down as governor of the Japanese central bank on April 8, after serving for a decade, the longest term in Japanese history.
With its decision, the Japanese central bank has left the country’s interest rates unchanged at -0.1%, the same rate it has held since January 2016, when it entered negative territory for the first time in its history.
Likewise, the entity has indicated that it will continue to apply its policy of controlling the public debt yield curve, allowing the yield on the 10-year Japanese bond to fluctuate in a range of around /- 0.5 percentage points with respect to the level objective, while it will continue with its large-scale sovereign bond purchases.
At its meeting last December, the Bank of Japan surprised the markets by widening the accepted range of fluctuations for the Japanese 10-year bond price in its yield curve control strategy.
The institution then announced an adjustment in the accepted trading band of the Japanese 10-year bond price from around /-0.25 percentage points to the current /-0.5 percentage points.
The entity stressed that it will continue with its policy of quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (QQE) with control of the yield curve, with the objective of reaching the price stability target of 2%, as long as it is necessary to maintain that target consistently. stable.
On the other hand, the Bank of Japan has highlighted that the country’s economy, despite being affected by the high prices of raw materials, recovered as the reopening of economic activity progressed, although the slowdown in international economies has weighed on exports and industrial production, while private consumption has continued to grow moderately, despite price increases.
Regarding inflation, the entity highlighted that the CPI excluding fresh food has been around 4% due to the increase in the cost of energy and durable goods, but it is confident that the year-on-year rate will slow down towards the middle of fiscal year 2023. due to the effects of the reduction in energy prices and government measures.
Kazuo Ueda, the candidate proposed by the Japanese government to assume the post of governor of the Bank of Japan next April, has for the moment been in favor of continuing the lax policy applied in the country over the last decade when considering that the positive effects outweigh the negative.
“A policy always has effects and side effects (…) I think that the benefits of monetary easing outweigh the side effects,” said Ueda during his parliamentary appearance at the end of February prior to the confirmation of his appointment as the next governor of the Bank from Japan.
In this way, Ueda has made it clear that his arrival at the Japanese issuing institute will not mean a change in the country’s monetary policy, since he has assured that the current monetary easing and the purchases of government bonds carried out by virtue of it are aimed at achieve the objective of price stability.
The Government of Japan, led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, formally nominated on February 14 Kazuo Ueda, an economist and former director of the Bank of Japan, as a candidate to become the next governor of the Japanese central bank, thus happening on the I charge Haruhiko Kuroda, who has led the country’s monetary policy since 2013.
Kuroda became president of the Bank of Japan in 2013 and was re-elected in 2018, completing a ten-year tenure at the helm of Japanese monetary policy, the longest in history.
Kazuo Ueda, 71, was a director of the Bank of Japan between 1998 and 2005 and recalls his decision to vote against raising rates from zero to 0.25% in August 2000, while in an article published last year warned against a premature increase in interest rates.
