Bank of Japan Governor "Nearly raising interest rates"

"In the sense that the data is changing as assumed, it is getting closer," the governor of the central bank said of further rate hikes.Governor Kazuo Ueda of the Bank of Japan
said in an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported on the 30th, "If there is greater certainty that inflation will steadily rise toward 2%, we will adjust the degree of monetary easing at an appropriate time."Since taking office in April last year, Ueda
has been pushing for what he called "financial normalization," which changes large-scale monetary easing policies that keep interest rates at very low levels.

The Bank of Japan ended its negative rate policy in March by raising its benchmark short-term policy rate for the first time in 17 years, and in July also raised the rate to around 0.25% from 0-0.1%.

Financial markets predict that the Bank of Japan will raise interest rates to 0.5% at its financial policy-making meeting next month or January next year.Governor

Ueda hinted at the possibility of a further rate hike, but indicated that he would not make a hasty decision on whether to raise interest rates.

Regarding the launch of the Donald Trump administration in January next year, he expressed his intention to check foreign economic trends, saying, "There is a big question mark about what the U.S. economic policy will look like."Governor

Ueda also pointed out that excessive weak yen could be a risk to the Japanese economy, as the yen/dollar exchange rate rose from around 130 yen to 161 yen in July this year when he took office.

He stressed that if the yen's weakness progresses rapidly, it will respond by changing its financial policy.