MNI: Japan Upper House Approves Kuroda 2nd Term As BOJ Chief

--Upper House Also Okays Amamiya, Wakatabe As Deputy Governors

     TOKYO (MNI) - Japan's Upper House of the Diet approved on Friday in a

majority vote the government nomination of Haruhiko Kuroda for a second

five-year term as Bank of Japan governor.

     The Upper House, which is controlled by the ruling coalition, also approved

the government nominees for the two deputy governors -- Masayoshi Amamiya,

executive director in charge of monetary policy at the BOJ, and Masazumi

Wakatabe, an economics professor at Waseda University.

     The Lower House, which is also controlled by the ruling coalition, is

expected to approve the nominees on Friday afternoon, finalizing the

parliamentary process of endorsing the incoming top BOJ policymakers.

     Kuroda's current five-year term ends on April 8 while Amamiya and Wakatabe

will replace Hiroshi Nakaso and Kikuo Iwata, whose five-year terms end on

Monday.

     The new deputy governors are expected to hold a joint news conference late

on Tuesday.

     At a news conference last week after the latest BOJ policy meeting, Kuroda

repeated his recent remarks that the central bank is "not at a stage to consider

the specifics of an exit" from large-scale monetary easing because "there is

still some distance" toward the bank's 2% inflation target.

     Amamiya, 62, is a career central banker. He has been responsible for

drafting many of the bank's monetary policy measures, including the policies on

quantitative and quality easing and negative interest rates.

     Amamiya told a parliamentary committee last week that BOJ officials "are

discussing what exit options the BOJ has and how they should be used" in

preparation for the eventual unwinding of large-scale monetary easing.

     Wakatabe, 52, is a reflationist who has advocated bold monetary easing to

overcome deflation. He told lawmakers last week that he would like to assess

whether the current easy policy is enough to achieve the 2% price target and

that he would propose to conduct additional easing if necessary.

     Both Amamiya and Wakatabe said the benefits of aggressive easing are bigger

than its costs.

--MNI Tokyo Bureau; tel: +81 90-2175-0040; email: hiroshi.inoue@marketnews.com

--MNI Tokyo Bureau; tel: +81 90-4670-5309; email: max.sato@marketnews.com

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