"Japan's economy is likely to resume a moderate recovery as overseas growth picks up moderately and domestic demand remains resilient due to the effect of monetary easing and various stimulus measures"
- BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda
The Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said that Japan's policy members are closely watching moves of long-term interest rates and expressed the BoJ's readiness to take additional monetary-easing measures if the economy does not gain momentum as expected. During April's policy meeting Kuroda introduced unprecedentedly huge quantitative easing aimed at buying a large number of government bonds from financial institutes in order to lower long-term interest rates. Kuroda stunned market by promising to inject $1.4 trillion into the struggling economy in less than two years and claimed his readiness to reach 2% inflation in roughly two years. Nevertheless, despite all measures and efforts interest rates surged to a level higher than before the policy was introduced.
At the same time Kuroda pointed out that financial market will stabilize over time, reflecting overall improvement in Japan's economy. Meanwhile, Japan's central bank expressed its concerns that a high degree of uncertainty regarding the nation's economy still remain, including debt and financial crisis in the Eurozone, slow economic recovery in the U.S. as well as risks from emerging and commodity-oriented countries. Despite all difficulties Kuroda is sure in achieving the price stability target of 2% and said there are already signs of improvement.
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