A YEAR into his job, Bank of Japan (BOJ) governor Kazuo Ueda said he had achieved a goal he set when taking the helm: changing the bank’s complex monetary stimulus into a simpler framework.
Speaking in parliament on Monday (Apr 8), he also said the BOJ would continue with such efforts and set monetary policy in accordance with changes in the economy.
“When I assumed my post a year ago, I felt the BOJ’s policy framework had become a technically difficult one due to various reasons. If economic conditions allowed, I had hoped to make the framework simpler and easier to understand,” Ueda said.
“Thankfully, the economy was in fairly good shape in the previous fiscal year (that ended Mar 31), so I was able to fulfil my mission,” he told parliament.
Since becoming BOJ governor on Apr 9 last year, Ueda began dismantling his predecessor’s massive stimulus by removing a dovish forward guidance and phasing out the bank’s controversial bond yield control by end-2023.
In March, the BOJ ended eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its unorthodox policy, making a historic shift away from its focus on reflating growth with decades of massive monetary stimulus.
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The BOJ currently sets a single short-term interest rate target at a range of zero to 0.1 per cent unlike under yield curve control, when it had targets for both short- and long-term rates.
While it continues to buy government bonds worth roughly 6 trillion yen (S$53 billion) per month, Ueda has said the BOJ hopes to reduce the size of purchases in the future.
Ueda last week signalled the chance of raising interest rates again later this year, suggesting that his longer-term mission had yet to be fulfilled. REUTERS
