The college professor who looks set to run Japan’s central bank says he feels the sting of inflation when he gets his lunch.
(Bloomberg) — The college professor who looks set to run Japan’s central bank says he feels the sting of inflation when he gets his lunch.
“I work at a university and every day I just pick up a bento box from the convenience store for lunch,” Kazuo Ueda said during the first day of his confirmation hearings in parliament on Friday. “I’ve noticed that over the past year or so, what used to cost around 450 yen ($3.34), for example, has now risen to over 500 yen.”
The comments were in response to Communist Party lawmaker Takaaki Tamura, who questioned whether Ueda himself felt the impact of inflation in his daily life. Tamura also made reference to comments by current Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda in June that consumers were becoming more willing to accept higher prices, for which he was strongly criticized.
Japanese consumer prices excluding fresh food jumped 4.2% in January from a year earlier, the highest reading since 1981.
Ueda is highly likely to be confirmed as BOJ governor as the ruling party has the majority in both chambers of parliament. He will be tasked with working out when to end Japan’s ultra-easy monetary policy, which some critics say is unsustainable. He said the central bank should maintain its easy monetary policy for a while longer, saying it still hasn’t reached its goal of stable 2% inflation.
Click here for our TOPLive blog on Ueda’s confirmation hearing.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.