"What disappoints me was we can see the BOJ's hesitance to step up monetary stimulus"
- Takahiro Sekido, a strategist in Tokyo at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd.
The Bank of Japan doubled its inflation target and made an open-ended commitment to buy assets from next year in order to end years of economic stagnation. The government pledges its readiness on Tuesday to reach the 2% inflation goal as soon as possible after Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, has piled relentless pressure on the central bank to take bolder measures to pull Japan out of deflation. However, it was widely expected the BoJ would start pumping billions of Yen into the economy right now, but not from 2014. At the same time, meeting analysts' expectations, the BOJ maintained its overnight call rate target in a range of zero to 0.1% by a unanimous vote.
"What disappoints me was we can see the BOJ's hesitance to step up monetary stimulus," said Takahiro Sekido, a strategist in Tokyo at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. who formerly worked at the Bank of Japan. (8301) "Abe will keep pressing the BOJ but today's decisions indicate that Abe will probably wait for the next governor to make a significant shift in monetary policy."
"This is very good news," said Brian Redican, from Macquarie in Sydney. "For once, the BOJ has been more aggressive than the market expected. The government is clearly forcing the pace of change, which is no bad thing."
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