The Bank of Japan said on Friday it had decided to pursue its current policy of aggressive monetary easing to overcome deflation and prop up the world’s third-largest economy.
The bank “will conduct money market operations so that the monetary base will increase at an annual pace of about ¥60-70 trillion,” it said in a statement after a two-day policy meeting.
In April 2013, the bank decided to introduce aggressive monetary easing in order to achieve 2-per-cent inflation within about two years, in a country which has been plagued by 15 years of deflation.
Consumer prices jumped 3.2 per cent in April from a year earlier after Tokyo raised the sales tax to 8 per cent on April 1 from 5 per cent for the first hike in 17 years.
The price jump marked the 11th straight month of increase, the government said.
Japan’s economy grew at an annualised rate of 6.7 per cent in the January-to-March quarter, the government said on Monday, in a revision to the preliminary estimate of 5.9 per cent.