2024.01.2303:57:00UTC+00Bank Of Japan Keeps Policy Unchanged

The Bank of Japan left its massive monetary stimulus unchanged on Tuesday and downgraded its inflation outlook for the next fiscal year.

The BoJ policy board, led by Governor Kazuo Ueda, unanimously decided to maintain a negative interest rate of 0.1 percent on current accounts that financial institutions maintain at the central bank.

The bank will continue to purchase a necessary amount of Japanese government bonds without setting an upper limit so that 10-year JGB yields will remain at around zero percent.

The bank also decided to regard the upper bound of 1.0 percent for 10-year JGB yields as a reference in its market operations.

In the Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices, the central bank said consumer prices will remain above 2 percent through the fiscal 2024. The bank lowered its fiscal 2024 core inflation outlook to 2.4 percent from 2.8 percent and the projection for the fiscal 2025 was lifted to 1.8 percent from 1.7 percent.

The real economic growth forecast for the fiscal 2024 was lifted to 1.2 percent from 1.0 percent and the estimate for the fiscal 2025 was retained at 1.0 percent.