BOJ Keeps Policy Rate Unchanged

Tokyo, Sept. 20 (Jiji Press)--The Bank of Japan on Friday decided to keep its policy interest rate unchanged after implementing an additional rate hike in July.

The BOJ apparently thinks that the yen's historic slump that took the currency to around 161.90 to the dollar in early July has been corrected, reducing upside risks to prices and making further interest rate hikes less urgent.

At its just-ended two-day monetary policy meeting, the BOJ Policy Board voted unanimously to hold steady the bank's target of guiding the uncollateralized overnight call rate to around 0.25 pct.

At the end of July, the BOJ decided to raise the target from the range of around zero to 0.1 pct adopted in March, when the BOJ scrapped its negative interest rate policy in its first interest rate hike in 17 years.

The latest hike, coupled with mounting concerns about a possible U.S. economic slowdown, led the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average to mark its biggest one-day point fall and the yen to jump against the dollar.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]