While much of Asia is closed today, Friday 19 April 2019, Japan is open.
Japanese inflation data for March is out now, for March:
Headline CPI is 0.5% y/y
- expected 0.5% y/y, prior 0.2%
CPI excluding fresh food 0.8% y/y
- expected 0.7%, prior 0.7%
CPI excluding fresh food and energy 0.4% y/y
- ps. this the closest to US core CPI
- expected 0.4%, prior 0.4%
Inflation in Japan is running well below the BOJ's 2% target, as usual.
Next week we'll be getting the BOJ quarterly projections (as part of the BOJ monetary policy meeting, April 24 and 25 - statement on April 25). Reuters quote unnamed sources as saying the Bank is expected to project under 2% inflation all the way out to March of 2022.
The Bank have said, over and over, that they'll carry on with their large-scale easy monetary policy until inflation is sustainably around 2%. Doing so acts as a negative for the yen, which may be an issue in trade discussions with the US. Japan would very much like the yen not to be an issue at the discussions and insists the easing program is aimed at domestic purposes (to get inflation to target) and not for FX purposes (weakening the yen).
