Some Bank of Japan board members repeated that the expansion of BOJ’s asset purchase program has had some effects on the market, the minutes of the BOJ’s Nov. 15-16 meeting released Tuesday showed.
“Despite high strains in inter-global financial markets, Japan’s financial conditions continue to stay easy. This is because repeated expansion of the BOJ’s asset purchase program has exerted certain effects,” some board members said.
At the meeting, as well as at a subsequent extraordinary policy board meeting Nov. 30, the BOJ’s policy board voted unanimously to leave the unsecured overnight call loan rate in a 0.0%-0.1% range. It also maintained the size of its asset-purchase fund–the BOJ’s main tool for credit easing–at Y55 trillion.
At the Nov. 30 meeting, the BOJ decided to join other central banks from developed countries in easing funding and liquidity strains in the global financial system by lowering the cost of emergency US dollar loans by one half of a percentage point.
At the Nov. 30 meeting the board members shared the view that financial market strains were highly likely to be prolonged give the difficulties of the European sovereign debt problem.
EasyForexNews Research Team