By Leika Kihara <\/p>\n
TOKYO, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Japan has seen only moderate rises in consumer prices so far with the pass-through \u200cof higher costs from the Middle East conflict remaining \u200climited, Economy Minister Minoru Kiuchi said on Tuesday, offering a sanguine view on inflationary \u200brisks. <\/p>\n
The assessment contrasts with that of the Bank of Japan, which last week issued its strongest warning to date on the risks of inflation overshooting its 2% target. <\/p>\n
“The overall consumer price index rose 1.7% year-on-year \u200cin June, showing only \u2060moderate rises,” Kiuchi told a news conference, when asked about the BOJ’s warning. <\/p>\n
“We do need to be vigilant \u2060to the possibility that costs could be gradually passed onto food and other consumer goods from summer through autumn,” he added. <\/p>\n
But average real wages \u200bare expected \u200bto increase nearly 1% during \u200bthe current fiscal year ending \u200cin March 2027, Kiuchi said, stressing the government’s focus on cushioning the hit to households from rising inflation through fuel subsidies. <\/p>\n
“We hope the BOJ continues to guide appropriate policy to stably and sustainably achieve its 2% inflation target,” said Kiuchi, who is known as an \u200cadvocate of loose monetary policy. <\/p>\n
Kiuchi has attended \u200bthe BOJ’s recent policy meetings including last \u200bweek and in June, \u200bwhen the central bank raised interest rates to a \u200c31-year high of 1%. <\/p>\n
At the \u200bJune meeting, Kiuchi said \u200bthe BOJ must be held accountable for its decision and respond nimbly if the economy faced “extreme volatility,” a summary of \u200bopinions at the meeting \u200cshowed, remarks markets saw as signalling the government’s reservations over \u200bthe central bank’s rate-hike plans. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing \u200bby Christian Schmollinger and Shri Navaratnam) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Leika Kihara TOKYO, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Japan has seen only moderate rises in consumer prices so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[1300,44488,191,189,8278,8,188,190,10173,8639],"class_list":["post-68644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bank-of-japan","tag-consumer-prices","tag-economy","tag-economy-of-japan","tag-inflation-target","tag-japan","tag-japans-economy","tag-japanese-economy","tag-middle-east-conflict","tag-minoru-kiuchi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}