- BoJ minutes
The Bank of Japan's minutes from the central bank's meeting on August 6 and 7 showed that the members of the monetary policy board maintained their optimistic views over the country's economic recovery, saying that the weakness in Japan's output and exports was temporary. As it was already announced earlier last week, the BoJ decided to keep its monetary policy unchanged and also maintained its inflation and economic growth outlook. However, the nine-member board agreed that the central bank must be vigilant to the risk of a decline in exports from a prolonged slowdown in China and other emerging economies. In the meantime, policymakers concurred that emerging economies had suffered from a weak growth, but were likely to improve from a longer-term perspective.
Meanwhile, inflation in Japan is likely to be about 0% for the time being amid the renewed declines in oil prices as well as sluggish private consumption, raising further doubts concerning the BoJ's forecast that inflation will hit its 2% target by September next year. Core inflation, which excludes volatile energy prices, was at meagre 0.1% in June.
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