The BOJ holds a one-day policy board meeting today. There are no monetary policy decisions expected to be announced – Kuroda will want to allow the huge changes he announced on April 4 after the previous meeting to begin to have an effect. What is expected is a formal announcement of the 2% inflation target, and a time-frame for its achievement.
Nikkei reports from April 17 put this time frame at ‘spring, 2015′ (i.e. 2 years away). Latest reports, however, say the projections will be 1.5% by March 2015, and 2% by March 2016.
When to expect announcements from the meeting? The BOJ does not specify as exact time for the announcement, but 0330-0530GMT is the usual window. For today, given there are no major policy initiatives being debated the post-meeting announcement should be earlier in the window, closer to 0330GMT than 0530GMT, most likely 0330-0400GMT.
- Following the meeting the semi-annual Outlook report is released, that’s firm at 0600GMT. this report contains the BOJ’s economic forecasts.
- Then BOJ Governor Kuroda holds the post-meeting news conference at 0630GMT.
