TOKYO, May 2 (Reuters) – Japan’s monetary base soared to a
record in April, the Bank of Japan said on Thursday, as the
central bank’s more aggressive quantitative easing programme
boosts the amount of money flowing through the economy.
The BOJ unveiled a radical overhaul of monetary policy on
April 4 by shifting its policy target to the monetary base from
short-term interest rates.
The central bank aims to roughly double the monetary base
over two years by increasing purchases of government debt to end
15 years of nagging deflation. The monetary base is currency in
circulation and commercial banks’ deposits at the BOJ.
In April, the average monetary base was a record 149.6
trillion yen ($1.54 trillion), up 23.1 percent from the same
period a year earlier, the BOJ said in a statement.
At the end of April, the monetary base stood at 155.3
trillion yen, which was also a record high, central bank data
showed.
Under its new quantitative and qualitative monetary easing,
the BOJ expects the monetary base to reach 200 trillion yen at
the end of this year and then rise to 270 trillion yen at the
end of 2014.
($1 = 97.3450 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
