At the post meeting press conference, BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said, “We don’t need to further expand the band around our yield target…. It’s been not long since we decided on our measures in December. It will likely take some more time for the measures to start having an effect in fixing market function. With our flexible market operations, however, we expect market function to improve ahead… YCC is, therefore, likely to be sustainable.”
“Uncertainty regarding Japan’s economy is very high. It’s necessary to support the economy with our stimulus policy, to ensure companies can raise wages. By maintaining ultra-easy policy, we will strive to achieve our price target stably and sustainably accompanied by wage hikes,” he noted.
“Unlike in the past, we expect wages to rise quite a bit, when listening to comments from the business and labour union executives,” Kuroda said. “The pace of wage hikes is accelerating. But this is something we haven’t seen in the past… So we’re not 100% sure (whether) wages will indeed rise.”
