The Bank of Japan decided to review its approach to interest rate control and allow a further rise in long-term interest rates, and released the minutes of the July Monetary Policy Meeting. The members' opinions suggest that the revision was aimed at making it easier to continue with monetary easing.
At the July meeting, the Bank of Japan reviewed its approach to interest rate control and decided to allow the upper limit of long-term interest rate fluctuations to be up to 7 percent, in effect, depending on market developments.
According to the minutes of the meeting released on March 27, a few members commented that the reason for the revision was the side effects of the strict suppression of long-term interest rates in financial markets.
On this basis, there was an opinion that "Japan should be prepared to continue monetary easing while taking into account market functions and other factors," and pointed out that "it is necessary to clearly explain that the current flexibility of monetary management is not a step toward exit, but that there is no change in the stance of tenaciously pursuing monetary easing." It can be seen that the recent revision of the policy was aimed at making it easier to continue with monetary easing.
With regard to the 2 percent inflation target, many members said that they had not yet reached a situation where a sustainable and stable achievement of the target was expected in tandem with wage increases, while one member said, "The achievement of the price stability target is now clearly visible, and it is possible that the target will be identified around January or March next year." Views are divided among the committee members over the timing of achieving the targets.