TOKYO :The Bank of Japan received a sizeable number of requests to maintain or slightly slow the pace of tapering in its bond purchases from fiscal year 2026 onward, minutes of a meeting between the bank and financial institutions showed on Monday.
Despite a recent spike in super-long yields, a significant number of bond market participants also urged the central bank to leave unchanged its existing bond taper plan running through March 2026, the minutes showed.
The requests, made at the BOJ’s meeting with bond market participants on May 20-21, heighten the chance the BOJ will proceed slowly in reducing its huge balance sheet.
“From the viewpoint of predictability, the Bank should maintain the current pace of the reduction,” one participant was quoted as saying in the minutes on the BOJ’s bond taper plan for April 2026 onward.
The BOJ has been slowing bond purchases since August last year to halve monthly buying to 3 trillion yen by March 2026.
The opinions will be taken into account at the central bank’s next policy meeting on June 16-17, when it will conduct a review of its current taper plan and come up with a programme for fiscal 2026 onward.
