By Leika Kihara and Yoshifumi Takemoto
TOKYO- The Bank of Japan is facing fresh communication challenges as last week’s decision to raise interest rates, coupled with US recession fears, roils financial markets and cloud the outlook for further rate hikes.
The first test will come on Wednesday when BOJ Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida will deliver a speech and hold a news conference at the northern Japan city of Hakodate.
A career central banker with deep knowledge of the BOJ’s monetary settings, Uchida is seen as a mastermind of the bank’s rate hike path and communication.
In a speech in February, Uchida set out the BOJ’s plan on how to unwind a complex set of stimulus measures that laid the groundwork for its decision a month later to end negative interest rates and bond yield control.
“Given the latest market rout, Uchida is likely to offer a message aimed at soothing market jitters about the BOJ’s rate hike path,” said former BOJ board member Takahide Kiuchi.
BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda is also likely to attend a special parliament session to be convened later this month to discuss the market rout, a government source said.
Senior officials from the ruling and main opposition parties agreed on Tuesday to convene the lower house financial affairs committee session, where Ueda will be asked to speak, the source said, confirming an earlier report by Japan’s Jiji news agency.
It was not clear when exactly the session will be held. Japan’s government spokesperson could not be immediately contacted.
The BOJ raised interest rates last week to levels unseen in 15 years and signaled its readiness to hike borrowing costs further on growing prospects that inflation will durably hit its 2 percent target backed by solid wage growth.
The move, coupled with weak US data that stoked fears of a recession in the world’s largest economy, led to a global market rout with Japan’s Nikkei average suffering on Monday its worst selloff since the 1987 Black Monday crash.
The Nikkei soared more than 8 percent to above 34,000 in the opening minutes of trading on Tuesday, rebounding sharply from the previous day’s 12.4 percent plunge.
Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ, noted that the Nikkei also rebounded to varying degrees after the three previous occasions when it experienced double digit declines, including in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 and Tohoku earthquake in 2011.
“But it took a while before the Nikkei clawed back all those losses,” he said.
From July 11 to Monday’s close of 31,458.42, the Nikkei has seen 113 trillion yen ($792 billion) wiped off that peak market value.
Monday’s collapse was a “reminder that it is next-to-impossible to diversify equity risk by region (or by sector or style) during major corrections or bear markets,” said Stephen Dover, chief market strategist and head of Franklin Templeton Institute at Franklin Templeton.
“Opportunity will arise, but in our view, it is premature to step in at this point.” – Reuters
