According to Jinshi.com, on October 16, Bank of Japan board member Seiji Ando said that the Bank of Japan decided to cancel the negative interest rate policy and yield curve control (YCC) at its March meeting and use short-term interest rate operations as the main policy tool.
At its July meeting, the Bank of Japan raised interest rates and gradually reduced its purchases of long-term government bonds, aiming to achieve its 2% "price stability target" and promote policy normalization.
Ando believes that the conditions for policy normalization are in place, including that the CPI prices of all categories no longer show deflationary characteristics year-on-year, and the CPI level has exceeded the peak before the deflation period. He stressed that it is appropriate to adopt a gradual interest rate hike approach to avoid the market's expectations of falling into deflation again.
