BoJ Governor keeps door open to further stimulus, if needed

Japanese central bankers kept the door open to further policy easing, if needed, when they met in September.

In remarks to Sankei Shimbun on 20 August, the Governor of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, said there was a "fair probability" that new stimulus would be announced after the monetary authority had concluded its assessment of the impact its quantitative easing policies had over the past three years, Market News International reported.

"Based on our comprehensive assessment, there is a fair amount of possibility that we will conduct additional measures without hesitation, if necessary," he told the newspaper.

A further cut to the interest rate on the cash held by lenders at the central bank, then at -0.1%, was "technically possible", Kuroda also said.

Negative interest rates were unlikely to hurt the country's banking system because domestic lenders had sufficient capital, Kuroda added.

During the same interview, the BoJ's chief repeated his previous forecast for inflation to recover back towards 2.0% "during fiscal 2017".

As of 10:29 BST the dollar/yen was 0.37% higher to 100.60.