Asked how much room central banks have left in deepening negative rates, Kuroda said none of the central banks that adopt negative rates sets their policy rate deeply in minus territory. "It's true Europe and Japan have shown there is room to push interest rates into negative territory. But there's absolutely no room to push policy rates into minus territory of, say, 4 or 5 percent," he told reporters after the meeting with business leaders. Kuroda repeated that it was "premature" to unwind the BOJ's stimulus programme or debate an exit from its ultra-easy policy. Kuroda said it was "unrealistic" to bring up Japan's inflation target to around 3 or 4 percent, an idea floated by some U.S. academics as a way to heighten inflation expectations.

Source: New York Times September 25, 2017 07:41 UTC