TOKYO, Mar 10 (NNN-NHK) – Japan’s parliament, today endorsed the appointment of economist and academic, Kazuo Ueda, as the new Bank of Japan (BOJ) governor.
Ueda, 71, a former BOJ policy board member, was endorsed by the lower chamber of parliament a day earlier, and will succeed Haruhiko Kuroda, whose 10-year tenure ends on Apr 8.
The government’s picks for two BOJ deputy governors, Ryozo Himino, a former commissioner of the Financial Services Agency, and Shinichi Uchida, an executive director at the central bank, were also endorsed by parliament today.
Ueda will head Japan’s central bank for five years and guide its policy to achieve the bank’s long-held target of achieving a two-percent inflation target in a stable manner.
Ueda, who was instrumental in introducing the BOJ’s zero interest rate policy and quantitative easing measures, indicated that he plans to stick to the central bank’s massive monetary easing programme, to underpin the country’s largely stagnant economy, despite the programme being heavily criticised for requiring massive purchases of government bonds.
On Japan’s economic doldrums, the Cabinet Office here said yesterday that, the country’s economic expansion was downwardly revised from 0.6 percent to an annualised real 0.1 percent in the Oct-to-Dec period.
This was owing to public consumption and capital expenditure remaining strained under inflationary pressure and a weak yen.
The latter has been caused in part by a widening interest rate gap, between the BOJ and its global peers, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has been hiking its interest rate to tame decades-high inflation.
Ueda, a Shizuoka Prefecture-born academic, who earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, said, he believed that current inflationary pressure is predominantly “cost-push” and is down to rising import prices.
He said that, the cost-push factors are temporary and would eventually give way, with inflation here dropping below the two-percent mark later this year.
The remarks of former Kyoritsu Women’s University professor, however, run contrary to those of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, who told a hearing of a Senate committee recently that, larger and faster interest rate hikes could be expected forthwith, owing to continued high inflation.
