The Bank of Japan (BOJ) on Tuesday will maintain its current measures, including guiding long-term interest rates to around zero, keeping short-term interest rates to minus 0.1%, and increasing the central bank’s holdings of Japanese government debt by 80 trillion yen a year, all 42 economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecasted.
The central bank is also expected to raise its economic growth forecast for the first time in a year and keep its inflation forecasts unchanged for the first time in two years.
Moreover, growth is widely expected to pick up, courtesy of a $120 billion stimulus package unveiled last month by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Bloomberg’s economists Yuki Masujima said:
“The Bank of Japan will probably keep policy unchanged. There’s little reason for any shift. Fiscal stimulus should cushion a slowdown, the output gap is positive (if smaller), the yen is weaker, and the U.S. and China have inked a trade deal. But with inflation stagnant and far from the 2% target, the BOJ has to keep going.”
The BOJ is expected to release its policy statement and its economic forecasts on Tuesday.
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