BOJ: April easing even less likely - Nomura

FXStreet (Bali) - According to Tomo Kinoshita and Yasuhiro Takahash, Japanese Economists at Nomura, an April easing by the BOJ is even less likely now, following this week's BOJ governor Kuroda press conference.

Key Quotes

"Similar to the press conference after the last monetary meeting, Mr Kuroda’s comments provided evidence of the BOJ’s basic stance that: (1) there is little need for additional monetary easing in the near term, given relatively high expectations for inflation and economic recovery at present; and (2) the BOJ will not hesitate to ease policy if needed to achieve its 2% price stability target."

"For point (1), Mr Kuroda’s statement that price trends have shown a steady improvement has caused us to think that the BOJ is now even less likely to implement additional easing in 2015 H1. In terms of inflationary expectations, the February Confidence Survey had 87.3% of respondents expecting prices to be higher in one year’s time, versus 87.4% in January.'

"Going forward, attention will be focusing on the March BOJ Tankan survey, published on 1 April, and the Opinion Survey on the General Public’s Views and Behavior, published the following day, and we think these will show a further improvement in price trends