ForexLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: BOJ drops hints of policy change/tweak in July

News

Over
the weekend there was a filed coup attempt in Russia, see the bullets
above for the developments. Oil opened fairly steadily in US futures
Sunday evening trade but soon gained ground. Its since retraced that
gain is little changed on the session now.

From
the session here today we had the Bank of Japan ‘Summary of
Opinions’ from its June meeting. The “Summary of Opinions”
provides a concise summary of the views expressed by Policy Board
members during the meeting. The full Minutes of this meeting will
follow on 2 August 2023.

Notable
from this meeting were comments from members to the effect that:

  • There
    is strong chance consumer inflation will moderate, but won’t slow
    back below 2%, toward middle of current fiscal year
  • Although
    the rise in raw material prices has paused, firms’ pass-through of
    cost increases to their selling prices has intensified further, the
    employment and income situation has improved, and inbound tourism
    demand has recovered. Given this, inflationary pressure is likely to
    remain strong for the time being
  • Corporate
    behaviour has seen clear changes, and price and wage hikes have been
    incorporated into corporate strategy
  • due
    attention is required because the possibility that the persistence of
    price rises in Japan has been underestimated cannot be ruled out, as
    were the cases with Europe and the United States
  • One
    member called for early revision of YCC policy. The
    member said that while the BOJ should maintain its current monetary
    stimulus for now, since the cost of waiting to achieve sustainable 2%
    inflation is low for the BOJ’s overall easing program. However,
    from the perspective of improving market functioning, communication
    with investors and preventing sharp moves in interest rates when the
    BOJ exits its current monetary easing, using yield curve control is
    costly, the member added.

Taken
together these points seem strongly indicative of a change to policy
coming at the July (27 an 28) meeting, at the very least a ‘tweak’
to YCC.

USD/JPY
opened a touch weaker on the session and has traded a circa 143.24 –
143.70 range.

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