(Reuters) -The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Friday and revised up its assessment on consumption, signalling its confidence a solid economic recovery will allow the central bank to raise interest rates again in coming months.
As widely expected, the BOJ kept short-term interest rates steady at 0.25% at a two-day meeting that ended on Friday.
Following are excerpts from BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda’s comments at his post-meeting news conference, which was conducted in Japanese, as translated by Reuters:
INTEREST RATES
“Our decision on monetary policy will depend on economic, price and financial developments at the time. Japan’s real interest rates remain extremely low. If our economic and price forecasts are achieved, we will raise interest rates and adjust the degree of monetary support accordingly.”
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
“The outlook for overseas economic development is highly uncertain. Markets remain unstable. We need to scrutinise such developments carefully for the time being.”
PRICE TARGET
“We will carefully examine how such risks affect our outlook and the likelihood of achieving our price target.”
EXCHANGE RATE
“As for recent exchange-rate developments, the risk of an inflation overshoot from rising import prices has diminished significantly. As such, we have some time to decide on policy.” NOMINAL WAGES
“Wages must rise in a way that is consistent with sustainably achievement of our price target. Nominal wages are rising, reflecting strong wage negotiation outcome and pushing up income. Bonuses are rising. We expect wages to keep rising.”
ON WHETHER MARKETS HAVE STABILISED “It’s hard to say how long it will take to determine (whether markets have stabilised). We don’t have a specific deadline. But one factor we’d like to look at is whether the U.S. economy will achieve a soft landing, or whether the slowdown could be a bit more severe.”
WAGE NEGOTIATIONS
“We are hopeful that next year’s wage negotiations will be strong. But we must scrutinise how overseas economic developments could affect corporate activity and profits.”
BROAD WAGE HIKES
“Wage hikes are broadening, but some smaller firms are struggling. We want to carefully scrutinise whether wage hikes will broaden.” JAPAN’S ECONOMY ON TRACK “Looking at consumption and other data, Japan’s economy is on track and moving in line with our forecasts. We could have even upgraded our view on inflation expectations, based on domestic data. But uncertainty on the U.S. economic outlook has heightened. That is offsetting some of our optimism on inflation expectations.” ON JAPAN’S NEUTRAL INTEREST RATE
“So far, we have yet to narrow down the estimated level of Japan’s neutral rate … We need to deepen analyses including the impact of our two rate hikes this year.”
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
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