BOJ member stresses need to continue easing policy: minutes

May 8, 2019

Tokyo--A Bank of Japan policymaker emphasized at a monetary policy meeting in March the need to continue the central bank's powerful monetary easing policy, minutes of the meeting showed Wednesday.

The member of the BOJ's Policy Board noted that it is important for the BOJ to "explicitly convey to the market" that it is "not different from other central banks in terms of the direction of monetary policy by presenting its determination that it would persistently continue with the powerful monetary easing."

The remark came after many overseas central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, changed their stances to newly underscore the importance of monetary easing measures against the backdrop of growing concerns over a slowdown in the global economy.

Apparently based on the discussions about the need to keep in step with other central banks, BOJ decided at a policy-setting meeting in April to clarify its forward guidance by committing to "extremely low" interest rates at least through around spring 2020.

At the meeting on March 14-15, many BOJ policymakers, worried over high uncertainties regarding the global economy, pointed to the need to pay attention to "the possibility that investors' risk aversion would heighten and the markets would become unstable," according to the minutes.

Some policymakers said, while the widely held view is that the global economy would pick up in the latter half of 2019, there are "considerable uncertainties in this regard," the minutes showed. Jiji Press