The Bank of Japan has kept monetary policy steady at its final meeting for the year and remained upbeat about the economic outlook.
The Japanese central bank left interest rates unchanged, as expected, at minus 0.1 per cent, which is where they have been since the BoJ took them into negative territory in January as it experimented with negative rates in an effort to spur domestic growth and inflation.
Analysts had been more interested about whether and how the recent depreciation in the yen and rally in oil prices might influence domestic inflation and price expectations, and whether there might be any alteration to the BoJ’s bond yield target.