Saturday 14 June 2014

BoJ maintains monetary policy, Chinese industrial output and retail sales rise, US consumer sentiment falls

The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged at its policy meeting on Friday. In a statement accompanying the decision, the BoJ said that “Japan's economy is expected to continue a moderate recovery”.

The BoJ refrained from applying new stimulus despite a report on Friday showing that industrial production fell 2.8 percent in April, worse than a preliminary estimate of a 2.5 percent decline.

The economic data from China on Friday were more positive though.

Industrial production rose 8.8 percent in May from the previous year, up from 8.7 percent in April. Retail sales rose 12.5 percent in May, up from 11.9 percent in April.

However, fixed-asset investment slowed to a 17.2 percent rise year-on-year in the January-May period from 17.3 percent in the first four months of the year.

In the US, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index for June unexpectedly fell to 81.2 from 81.9 in May.

Another report on Friday showed that US producer prices fell 0.2 percent in May.

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