After an emergency meeting today, BoJ announced further monetary easing to counter the economic impact of coronavirus pandemic. In particular, annual pace of ETF purchase is doubled from JPY 6T to JPY 12T. J-REIT purchases are also doubled to JPY 180B per year.
The Special Funds-Supplying Operations to Facilitate Corporate Financing is introduced to provide loans against corporate debt at 0% interest rate with maturity up to 1 year. The operation will be conduced until end of September this year.
The policies under the yield curve control is held unchanged. Short-term policy interest rate target is kept unchanged at -0.10%. BoJ will continue to purchase JGBs to keep 10-year yield at around zero percent. Annual pace of monetary base expansion is kept at around JPY 80T.
The central bank also pledged to “take additional monetary easing steps as needed without hesitation with a close eye on the impact from the coronavirus epidemic for the time being”.
