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☆ BOJ's hawkish rhetoric signals chance negative rates may end soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Leika Kihara | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Having watered down YCC at its last policy meeting, the BOJ's next goal is to pull short-term rates out of negative territory early next year, sources have told Reuters. That leaves open the chance of an policy change in January, when the BOJ next reviews its quarterly price forecasts. Most expect an end to both YCC and negative rates. "It's an awfully big upgrade and shows how the BOJ had made estimates that were way too low," said former BOJ top economist Hideo Hayakawa, who expects negative rates to end in April. Even if it ends negative rates, nominal short-term borrowing costs will remain well below levels that neither stimulate nor cool the economy - estimated by analysts to stand somewhere near 2%.

Persons: Issei Kato, Ueda, Kazuo Ueda's, Haruhiko Kuroda, Kuroda, Mari Iwashita, Hideo Hayakawa, Takahide, Leika Kihara, Takahiko Wada, Sam Holmes Organizations: Bank of Japan, REUTERS, Daiwa Securities, Japan Center for Economic Research, Thomson Locations: Tokyo, Japan, TOKYO, U.S

☆ Explainer: More nuclear challenges await Japan after Fukushima water release
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Kiyoshi Takenaka | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/2] Activists attend a protest against Japan's plan to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean, at the national assembly in Seoul, South Korea, August 24, 2023. MOLTEN FUEL REMOVALTepco has described the effort to remove highly radioactive fuel debris from reactor cores as an "unprecedented and difficult challenge never attempted anywhere in the world". That was the worst nuclear plant accident before the 1986 Chornobyl tragedy in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. About 12.1 trillion yen had been spent on such activities by March 2022, Japan's audit panel, which reviews government expenditures, has said. That represents an expenditure of more than half of the government's estimate, even before really tough tasks such as fuel debris retrieval have begun, in turns raising concerns about cost overruns.

Persons: Kim Hong, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Katya Golubkova, Clarence Fernandez Organizations: REUTERS, Rights, Tokyo Electric Power Co, Tepco, U.S, Japan, Japan Center for Economic Research, Thomson Locations: Seoul, South Korea, Japan, Pennsylvania, Ukraine, Soviet Union, Fukushima

"We expect inflation to quite clearly slow below 2%" toward the middle of the current fiscal year, Ueda told parliament. "Inflation is likely to rebound thereafter ... though there is high uncertainty" on the outlook, he added. Positive signs included a likely big increase in pay in this year's annual wage negotiations, which could help shake off Japan's deflationary mindset. The BOJ will review its quarterly growth and inflation forecasts at the July 27-28 policy meeting. Reporting by Leika Kihara and Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman & Shri NavaratnamOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ China’s Economy Won’t Be Number One
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

China’s ruling Communists believe the U.S. is in decline while they are the vanguard of history, but perhaps they’re getting ahead of themselves. That’s the latest judgment of the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER), which now assesses that China’s economy won’t surpass America’s in size by 2035 after all. JCER issues a periodic assessment of trends in Asia-Pacific economies, and as recently as 2021 it forecast that China’s nominal GDP would exceed America’s by 2029. The Japanese think tank now estimates that the U.S. will maintain a healthy lead over the People’s Republic, with U.S. GDP exceeding $41 trillion in 2035. China’s will be closer to $36 trillion.

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