- Bank of Japan
Minutes of the latest Bank of Japan meeting showed that officials reiterated the view that the world's third biggest economy continued to recover moderately, despite exports and production remaining more or less flat due to the effects of the slowdown in emerging markets. On the domestic side, the central bank saw private consumption staying resilient and labour market conditions continuing to improve steadily. With regards to inflation, some members of the BoJ's policy board assumed that an output gap was one reason Japan's economy was taking longer to meet inflation targets, highlighting a lingering worry that the delay in reaching the 2% inflation target meant that QE had been ineffective. At the meeting on October 30, the BoJ pushed back the timing of hitting its 2% goal by six months to the second half of fiscal 2016 due to weak oil prices.
Policy makers predicted that domestic demand was likely to follow an uptrend and exports were likely to start increasing moderately on the back of recovery in emerging economies. Thus, the Japanese economy was seen growing at a pace above its potential from fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2016.
© Dukascopy Bank SA