Tuesday 20 May 2008

Japan's interest rates left unchanged, leading index revised down

There was no change in interest rates from the Bank of Japan today. Bloomberg reports:

The Bank of Japan kept interest rates on hold at the first meeting after slashing its growth estimate and shelving a two-year policy of seeking higher borrowing costs.

Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and his six colleagues unanimously voted to leave the overnight lending rate at 0.5 percent in the quickest decision in three years, the central bank said in Tokyo. The rate is the lowest among major economies.

The world's second-largest economy is slowing, the central bank said in its monthly report released after the meeting...

Among economic data released today, there was good news in the form of a 0.3-percent increase in the tertiary index in March.

The bad news, however, is that Japan's index of leading economic indicators for March has been revised down from 20.0 to 18.2.

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