The Bank of Japan on Friday decided to retain ultralow interest rates to support the Japanese economy amid rising inflationary pressure from higher energy and raw material costs and the yen's continuing falls.
The Japanese central bank revised upward its inflation forecast for the current fiscal year to next March to 2.9 percent from its earlier projection of 2.3 percent. Its growth forecast for the world's third-largest economy was cut to 2.0 percent from 2.4 percent in its latest outlook report.
At the end of a two-day policy meeting, the BOJ made no change to its yield curve control program. It set short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent while guiding 10-year Japanese government bond yields around zero percent, in a widely expected decision.
