Japan's central bank chief vows ease policy

Bank of Japan (BOJ) new Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Thursday renewed his pledge that the central bank will promote drastic monetary easing to meet expectations in the financial market. "It is necessary to continue bold monetary easing both in quantity and quality to achieve the 2-percent inflation target at the earliest," Kuroda, who became the BOJ chief last week, said at the upper house fiscal and monetary committee. "BOJ's biggest task is to end the country's 15 years of deflation, and we will take every possible means to achieve the goal," he said. "It is also important for us to explain our aggressive stance on easing to the financial market in a simplified manner." The BOJ chief also said that the central bank will conduct balanced purchases of financial assets, including more purchases of longer-term government bonds and riskier assets, to pump more cash into the banking system in the world's third-largest economy. Under its current monetary easing program, the BOJ buys government bonds with a maximum maturity of up to three years. Meanwhile, Kuroda said the BOJ has no plans to buy foreign bonds as part of monetary easing, noting that there are many other monetary easing options and doing so could be seen as currency intervention aimed at weakening the yen. The BOJ is scheduled to hold its first regular policy meeting under the new leadership on April 3-4, which is expected to focus on expansion of the central bank's financial asset purchase program.