(Finance) – “Our decision on tapering bond purchases and on increasing interest rates are two different things” and “there is a possibility that we could raise interest rates at our next meetingdepending on the economic data, prices, financial data and information available at that time,” he said Kazuo Uedagovernor of the Bank of Japan (BoJ), in a speech to parliament, according to Reuters.
At last Friday’s meeting, the BoJ has decided to start reducing his large purchases of bonds and to announce a detailed plan in July.
Ueda said the BoJ is not yet fully convinced that inflation will sustainably reach its 2% target, underlining the need to dedicate “a little more time” on data analysis before raising rates again.
But he said companies’ behavior in setting prices and wages had clearly changed against a backdrop of record profits and a tight labor market. “The economy will probably see clearer signs of a positive wage-inflation cycle” as nominal wages rise, he said.