Yen tumbled in Asian trade on Friday to six-week lows against the US dollar, sharpening its losses for the second day following the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting.
As expected, the BOJ maintained interest rates unchanged for the second meeting in a row, and as a challenge to market expectations, the BOJ asserted it’ll continue to purchase government bonds at the current pace, and will put a plan to reduce the purchases later at the July meeting.
The Price
The JPY/USD pair rose 0.6% today to 157.98, the highest since May 1, with a session-low at 156.79.
The yen lost 0.2% against the dollar on Thursday, the fourth loss in five days, after the Fed vowed to maintain interest rates high for most of the year.
The BOJ
As expected, the Bank of Japan voted to maintain interest rates at 0.1% and monetary policies unchanged.
The BOJ decided in March to raise short-term interest rates by 20 basis points to 0.10%, the first such rate hike since 2007.
In its update for the policy statement, the BOJ unexpectedly maintained the current plan purchasing government bonds at a pace of 6 trillion yen ($38 billion) a month.
The markets heavily expected the BOJ to announce a cut to its massive bonds purchases program this month.
However, the BOJ did say it’ll put up such a plan to reduce purchases at the July meeting.
The BOJ also removed any indications that it’ll continue to raise short-term interest rates to levels that don’t stun or overheat the market.
Nearly two thirds of the economists polled by Reuters expected the BOJ to start reducing its monthly bonds purchases this month.
The BOJ has recently started to normalize its policies at a time when most other central banks have gone a long way in tightening monetary policies to combat inflation, and now have moved on to rate cuts.
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