BOJ Maintains Bond Purchases in November After CPI Forecast Cut
BOJ Maintains Bond Purchases in November After CPI Forecast Cut
(Bloomberg) -- The Bank of Japan kept its range for debt purchases in November unchanged from the previous month after the benchmark 10-year bond yield stabilized around its target of zero percent.
The central bank is projected to buy about 7.45 trillion yen ($65.9 billion) of government bonds based on the midpoints of purchase ranges for the maturities listed in its statement Tuesday. Based on the same calculation method, it was projected to buy 7.55 trillion yen for October, though it ended up purchasing 7.74 trillion yen.
The Bank of Japan left its monetary stimulus program unchanged at a meeting Tuesday even as it trimmed its inflation forecasts. With the BOJ still far from its price target, there was no need to adjust stimulus, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said at a news conference.
The 10-year yield has moved between 0.045 and 0.08 percent this month, with the high of 0.08 percent set on Oct. 3 and Oct. 23, the most since July. The benchmark yield was unchanged Tuesday at 0.065 percent.
Details of the BOJ’s November bond-purchase plan include:
- Buy debt maturing up to 1 year about twice a month
- Spend about 50 billion yen to 150 billion yen at each operation
- Buy debt of 1-to-3 year and 3-to-5 year maturity on Nov. 6, 8, 15, 17, 22, 27
- Spend about 200 billion yen to 300 billion yen at each operation for the 1-to-3 year basket
- Spend about 250 billion yen to 350 billion yen at the 3-to-5 year basket
- Buy debt in the 5-to-10 year maturity on Nov. 2, 8, 10, 15, 22, 29
- To spend about 300 billion yen to 500 billion yen per operation
- Buy debt of more than 10 years on Nov. 2, 10, 17, 24, 29
- Spend about 150 billion yen to 250 billion yen for each 10-25 year operation, and about 50 billion yen to 150 billion yen for bonds with more than 25 years maturity
- BOJ projected the amount of outstanding treasury bills to be bought at the end of November at about 20 trillion yen to 25 trillion yen, versus forecast of about 23 trillion yen to 25 trillion yen for the end of October
--With assistance from Chikafumi Hodo
To contact the reporter on this story: Chikako Mogi in Tokyo at cmogi@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tan Hwee Ann at hatan@bloomberg.net, Nicholas Reynolds
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