By Leika Kihara
TOKYO (Reuters) -Some Bank of Japan policymakers saw consumer inflation briefly accelerating towards 2% as price pressures build up on changing corporate price-setting behaviour, a summary of opinions at the bank’s January meeting showed on Wednesday.
“There’s a chance year-on-year growth in consumer inflation may briefly approach 2%. If that happens, what’s important is to look at facts behind the rise and whether they’re sustainable,” one of the BOJ’s nine board members was quoted as saying.
“Consumer inflation may temporarily reach levels of around 1.5% in the first half of 2022. Whether that momentum is sustained enough for inflation to stably approach the BOJ’s 2% target would depend on wage and inflation expectations – or in sum the strength of demand,” a second opinion said.
Many BOJ board members, however, stressed the need to maintain the bank’s ultra-loose monetary policy to support the still-fragile economic recovery, the summary showed.
At the January policy meeting, the BOJ raised its inflation forecasts but said it was in no rush to change its ultra-loose policy. The prospect of rising prices has fanned speculation the central bank may soon signal a shift in its decade-old stimulus experiment.
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Richard Pullin)
