Economics
BOJ Maintains Stimulus as Inflation Lags Behind Growth
- Focus turns to chance of policy normalization starting in 2018
- Kuroda pushes back against speculation about ‘reversal rate’
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The Bank of Japan left policy settings unchanged in the final meeting of 2017, retaining its unprecedented monetary stimulus as it waits for a pickup in stubbornly low inflation.
With Japan’s economy continuing to grow at a healthy pace, and inflation at least moving in the right direction, there is little pressure on the BOJ adjust its interest-rate and asset-purchase targets any time soon. This sets it apart from its global counterparts, with the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates and the European Central Bank moving closer toward policy normalization.