Tokyo, 21 July, /AJMEDIA/
The Bank of Japan on Thursday kept its ultralow rate policy intact at the end of a two-day meeting in a widely expected move, despite upgrading its inflation outlook amid surging energy costs and a weak yen.
In a fresh quarterly outlook report released the same day, the BOJ said it expects a 2.3 percent rise in the core consumer price index excluding volatile fresh food items for the year to next March, up from its earlier projection of 1.9 percent.
The growth forecast for the Japanese economy for fiscal 2022 was cut to 2.4 percent from 2.9 percent in real gross domestic product, as Russia’s war in Ukraine and supply bottlenecks drag on.
The central bank retained its yield curve control program by setting its short-term interest rate at minus 0.1 percent and guiding 10-year Japanese government bond yields around zero percent.