"The next focal point is whether Kuroda will hold an emergency meeting"
- Shuichi Obata, senior economist at Nomura Securities Co.
Japan's parliament has approved Shinzo Abe's all three nominations for the top three jobs at the BoJ, suggesting more aggressive easing is expected to be introduced soon. On Friday, March 15, the upper house approved Haruhiko Kuroda as the Bank of Japan's next governor as well as Kikuo Iwata and Hiroshi Nakaso as deputy governors. During the last 20 years the world's third largest economy has been suffering from falling consumer prices, so Kuroda, who pledged to do whatever it takes to bring inflation up to 2%, will be able to end decades of deflation. Earlier this month Kuroda and Iwata supported the idea of buying government debt with longer maturities. All three will take control of the central bank on March 19, when the current governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, will step down.
"The next focal point is whether Kuroda will hold an emergency meeting," before the scheduled April 3-4 board gathering, said Shuichi Obata, senior economist at Nomura Securities Co. in Tokyo. "The BOJ is likely to extend the maturity of assets it buys and expand bond purchases."
"Expectations are extraordinarily high," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong.
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