"Japan's economy is expanding moderately," while overseas economies continue to grow steadily as a whole, the central bank said in a statement announcing the policy decision.The BOJ is in a dilemma. "The BOJ doesn't have much tools left to ease policy," said Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics. "But with global yields falling on growing pessimism over the global economy, it would also be hard for the BOJ to do anything that could be seen as policy normalisation. "The BOJ could slow its bond buying to prevent excessive yield falls. But doing so too much risks pushing up the yen," said Takahide Kiuchi, a former BOJ board member who is now executive economist at Nomura Research Institute.

Source: The Star December 20, 2018 03:33 UTC