By Leika Kihara<\/p>\n
TOKYO, May 12 (Reuters) – Some Bank of Japan policymakers argued in April for raising rates soon, with one flagging the chance of a \u200cJune move, highlighting a growing hawkish shift on the board as an oil \u200cshock from the Iran war raised pressure for near-term tightening.<\/p>\n
The benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond yield climbed to \u200ba 29-year high on Tuesday after a summary of opinions from last month’s meeting revealed an increasingly hawkish tone.<\/p>\n
“It is quite possible the BOJ will raise interest rates from the next meeting onward, even if the future course of the Middle East conflict remains unclear,” one \u200cboard member was quoted as \u2060saying in the summary.<\/p>\n
“While there is no need to take hasty action at this point, the BOJ should raise rates soon barring evident \u2060signs of an economic slowdown,” another opinion showed.<\/p>\n
With the BOJ’s policy rate still distant from levels deemed neutral to the economy, the BOJ must raise rates at intervals of a few months, \u200band \u200baccelerate the pace of hikes “without hesitation” if inflationary \u200brisks rise, a third opinion showed.<\/p>\n
The \u200cremarks heighten the chance the central bank will raise its policy rate at its next policy meeting on June 15-16.<\/p>\n
At the April 27-28 meeting, the BOJ kept its short-term policy rate steady at 0.75% but a hawkish split on the board underscored mounting concern over inflationary pressures from the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n
Three of the nine board members pushed for \u200can interest-rate hike, a proposal that was rejected but \u200bdid lead to a sharp upgrade in the \u200bbank’s inflation forecasts.<\/p>\n
Many BOJ policymakers said the \u200bIran war was intensifying inflation pressures, raising the risk of second-round \u200ceffects and bringing forward the timing for \u200bunderlying inflation to reach \u200b2%, the summary showed.<\/p>\n
“With the outlook for prices being revised significantly upward, uncertainty regarding the situation in the Middle East remains high, and all scenarios point to \u200bfurther upside risks to \u200cprices,” one member was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
“Moreover, supply-side constraints, if they materialize, will \u200bexert extremely strong upward pressure on prices,” the member said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; \u200bEditing by Tom Hogue and Shri Navaratnam)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Leika Kihara TOKYO, May 12 (Reuters) – Some Bank of Japan policymakers argued in April for raising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1879,205089,114,85,4486,46,86581],"class_list":["post-437195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bank-of-japan","tag-board-member","tag-business","tag-il","tag-interest-rates","tag-israel","tag-policy-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}