By www.CentralBankNews.info Japan’s central bank maintained its target for expanding the country’s monetary base by an annual 60-70 trillion yen as inflation continues to accelerate and economic activity strengthens.
The Bank of Japan (BOJ), which is seeing the effects of the aggressive monetary easing that began in April, omitted any reference to the government’s plan announced this week to offset some of the impact of a planned sales tax rise with a stimulus package.
The BOJ repeated its statement from September that the country’s economy “is recovering moderately” and should continue a moderate recovery while the annual rate of increase in consumer prices “is likely to rise gradually.”
In August, Japan’s inflation rate accelerated to 0.91 percent from 0.7 percent in July and 0.3 percent in June when inflation turned positive for the first time in 12 months.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Gross Domestic Product expanded by 0.9 percent in the second quarter from the first for annual growth of 0.9 percent, a jump from 0.3 percent in the first quarter, and the fastest growth rate in the last four quarters.
