In the post meeting press conference, BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda admitted that “Japan’s exports and output are being affected by lean overseas growth”. However, he also pointed out “domestic demand continues to grow.” Hence, BoJ maintained the baseline view that “economy is expanding moderately”. Though, regarding inflation he said “it is likely to take longer to achieve our target”.
Kuroda also defended BoJ’s policy and noted “We are not saying that we only care about achieving our price target.” Instead, BoJ’s goal is that “prices should rise gradually, reflecting an improvement in corporate profit and job growth rate”. For now, there is no need to make any change to the price target.
