BoJ’s Negative Interest Rate’s Scope Capped At ¥30T

The Bank of Japan will limit the scope of its newly introduced negative interest rate to a small portion of financial institutions’ current-account deposits — between 10 trillion yen and 30 trillion yen ($84.5 billion to $253 billion), The Nikkei has learned.

The amount will represent no more than a tenth or so of the total. The BOJ reckons that even a narrow application of its new monetary easing tool will spur banks to lend and invest.

Bank shares plunged after the policy change was introduced last week. The BOJ is trying to give the stock market a sense of the size of the impact on financial industry earnings.

The rate of negative 0.1%, to take effect on Feb. 16, will initially apply to about 10 trillion yen of reserves, the BOJ announced Wednesday.

Current-account funds are expected to total 260 trillion yen in February, 210 trillion yen of which will earn interest at a 0.1% rate. Of the remainder, an initial 10 trillion yen will be subject to the negative rate, while 40 trillion yen will earn zero interest. While the total balance is expected to rise at an annual pace of 80 trillion yen, the majority of this growth will occur within the zero-interest tier.

Even a limited introduction “will put pressure in a negative direction on a broad range of interest rates,” a senior BOJ official said. Indeed, yields on Japanese government debt tumbled after the policy was announced, with the benchmark two-year rate dropping to a record low of negative 0.19% Wednesday.

Nikkei Asian Review

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.