Boj’s UEDA maintains a pledge of prices, but warns of the impact of the American tariff

By playing Kihara

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Japanese ruler Kazo Oda said that the central bank will continue to raise interest rates if the basic inflation is approaching the target of inflation by 2 % as expected.

But he said that the central bank will lose how different information, including potential economic repercussions from the US higher definitions, could affect the proper achievement of its price – a prerequisite for further interest rates.

Definitions affect the economy through various channels such as influencing commercial activity, commercial morale, and increasing market fluctuations, as UEDA stated in a press conference after attending a group of 20 financing leaders held during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group meetings in Washington.

He said: “After I exchanged views with policy makers from other countries, I felt that many of them had almost the same opinion” on the way the tariff affects their economies.

Oda said he would take into account the results of his dialogue with global policy makers in building a BOJ assessment on the Japanese economy and the status of monetary policy.

Oda said: “We will continue to raise interest rates if the basic inflation is gradually converging towards our 2 % goal, as we stand out,” Oda said.

“But we would like to scrutinize the various data that comes, without prior visualization,” he said.

UEDA comments have preceded the BOJ Politics meeting next week, when the central bank is expected to keep the interest rates fixed by 0.5 % and reduce its growth expectations.

BOJ, which ended the huge stimulus program for ten years last year, raised the short -term interest rate to 0.5 % in January in the belief that the economy was on the threshold of achieving the goal of inflation by 2 % for the Central Bank.

While UEDA indicated that BOJ is ready to continue to raise prices, US President Donald Trump’s tariff led to the complexity of the decision on when and to what extent could he go.

A senior IMF official said on Wednesday that he is likely to retract the timing of the high additional interest rates because the uncertainty caused by the American tariff has exacerbated the negative risks to growth and inflation.

In its global economic outlook, the International Monetary Fund said it expects the Japanese economy to expand by 0.6 % in 2025, a decrease in half a percentage of its previous forecast in January, due to the American definitions.

(Participated in the reports of Lika Kihara; edited by Dan Burns)