MNI BRIEF: A Few Members See 2% Price Target - BOJ Jan Minutes

A few Bank of Japan board members believed the sustainable and stable achievement of the bank's 2% price target was in sight at the January 22-23 meeting, the minutes released on Monday showed.

One of these members judged the possibility to normalise monetary policy would increase once the bank assessed the degree of macroeconomic impact of the recent earthquake was not significant, the minutes showed.

The BOJ last week decided to terminate its negative interest rate and yield curve control policy. (See MNI BOJ WATCH: Ueda Says Rate Path Will Depend On Prices)

“If overseas central banks headed toward policy interest rate cuts, the flexibility of monetary policy in Japan could be reduced,” noted a different member.

Now was a golden opportunity for a change in monetary policy, and the Bank's policy decisions needed to take into account that, if it missed the policy revision opportunity and continued with the current monetary policy, the accompanying side effects would remain until the next recovery phase, particularly that of overseas economies, the member said.