Bank of Japan’s Noguchi says future rate hikes likely to be slow

BANK of Japan board member Asahi Noguchi said on Thursday that the pace of future rate hikes by the central bank will likely be far slower than the aggressive rate hikes of other major central banks.

“With regard to the pace of policy rate adjustment, it is expected to be slow, at a pace that cannot be compared to that of other major central banks in recent years,” Noguchi said in a speech to business leaders in the south-western city of Saga.

“This is because ... it would take a reasonable amount of time to reach a situation where prices continue to rise at around 2 per cent as a trend,” he said.

The BOJ ended eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its unorthodox policy last month, making a historic shift away from its focus on reflating growth with decades of massive monetary stimulus.

Investors are looking for any clues on how soon the central bank will raise short-term interest rates again from the current 0 to 0.1 per cent range, with bets on the timing ranging between July and the final quarter of this year.

A former academic, Noguchi was among two dissenters on the BOJ’s nine-member board in the decision last month to end eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its massive stimulus programme. REUTERS