— Japan Noda: G7 To Continue Cooperating in ‘Appropriate’ Manner
— Japan Noda: G7 To Keep Watching Market Moves

TOKYO (MNI) – Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on
Tuesday that concerted foreign exchange intervention by the Group of
Seven major nations last week was “significant” in helping stabilizing
markets jolted by Japan’s worst nuclear crisis.

After the dollar plunged to a record low of Y76.25 on Thursday, the
G7 finance ministers and central bank governors issued a joint statement
after their telephone call conference early on Friday Tokyo time, vowing
to act together in order to ensure forex market stability.

The Bank of Japan, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, conducted
yen-selling operations on Friday, pushing the dollar back up close to
Y82.

Asked about the possibility of a further forex intervention, Noda
replied that the G7 will keep watching market fluctuations and
“cooperate in an appropriate manner.”

He declined comment on specific dollar-yen levels.

The dollar was quoted just above Y81 in early Asian trade on
Tuesday after moving in a range of Y80.72 to Y81.33 overnight.

Friday’s intervention was the first concerted G7 forex action since
September 2000, when the euro came under heavy selling as capital flowed
into the U.S. stock market at the peak of the IT bubble.

Yen-selling interventions by the G7 is estimated to have totaled Y2
trillion to Y2.5 trillion, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said that the European Central Bank, Bank of England
and the Federal Reserve conducted yen-selling interventions in their
markets after the Tokyo market closed on Friday.

On the fiscal front, the Nikkei business daily reported on Tuesday
that the government will consider diverting money supposed to cover its
underfunded contributions to the basic national pension into a
supplementary budget for recovering from the disaster in eastern Japan.

But Noda said the government will decided on the scale of a planned
supplementary budget only after ministries have finished estimating the
degree of the damage to northeast Japan caused by the deadly earthquake
and tsunami on March 11.

Japan is trying to contain radioactive leaks at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant on the northeast Pacific coast. The cooling
systems at the plant have been damaged by the quake with a magnitude of
9.0 on the international scale and tsunami as high as 14 meters. This
has caused fears of a meltdown of overheated fuel rods.

About 200 kilometers southwest of the plant, Tokyo and other big
cities rely heavily on power supply from Fukushima.

tokyo@marketnews.com
** Market News International Tokyo Newsroom: 81-3-5403-4833 **

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