The Bank of Japan decided at its meeting that ended this morning, Friday, June 17, to keep monetary policy unchanged, as members of the bank voted as expected to keep the current negative short-term interest rates at -0.10% in addition to maintaining the 10-year bond yield at 0 % .

The bank is buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for 12 trillion yen and J-REITs for 180 billion yen.

The Japanese central bank and President Kuroda continue to swim against the trend and normalize or facilitate monetary policy, unlike the rest of the central banks around the world that are racing to raise interest rates and tighten monetary policy to counter the effects of high inflation.

The bank’s monetary policy statement stated that the risks of the Ukraine crisis are still high and that it has destabilized the financial markets and raised the uncertainty about the Japanese economy and escalated the risks to the economic recovery through the rise in the prices of raw materials and the instability of financial markets.

The Japanese yen fell against the US dollar to levels of 134.60 when the statement was announced before rising and is now trading at levels of 134.00 as the US dollar benefits from the widening gap as we mentioned in the monetary policy between Japan and the United States of America.