Japan Minister Sees Room for More QE

Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari warned that it would be premature for the Bank of Japan to consider an exit strategy from its massive stimulus program, voicing hope instead for further monetary easing if achievement of its inflation goal falls behind schedule.

Amari also said that while Japan appears to be emerging from years of persistent price declines, it was too early to formally declare a sustained end to deflation with the economic recovery still vulnerable to external shocks.

“The BOJ has expressed strong determination that it won’t hesitate to take further action if (the timing for meeting the inflation target) is not on schedule,” Amari said in an interview at a Reuters Newsmaker event on Friday.

“If the BOJ judges that it’s not on schedule, I think the central bank will decide on its own (to act),” he said.

The central bank has kept policy unchanged since deploying an intense burst of monetary stimulus in April last year, when it pledged to double base money via aggressive asset purchases to accelerate inflation to 2 percent in roughly two years.

With Japan only halfway to meeting that target, the BOJ is set to keep its stimulus plan intact well into next year, in contrast to its U.S. and British counterparts, which are starting to telegraph plans for interest rate hikes.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza