Japan Monetary Base Hits Record High for 7th Month

Tokyo, Oct. 2 (Jiji Press)--Japan's monetary base hit a record high for the seventh straight month in September, continuously supported by the Bank of Japan's bold monetary easing, BOJ data showed Wednesday. The monetary base, or the combined balance of currency in circulation and commercial financial institutions' current account deposits at the BOJ, stood at 185,555.1 billion yen at the end of September, up 43.4 pct from a year before. Compared with the end of August, the monetary base expanded 4.9 pct. The BOJ aggressively buys Japanese government bonds under its "quantitative and qualitative" monetary easing policy regime launched in April. Thanks to this, the balance of financial institutions' current account deposits at the end of September jumped 2.2-fold year on year to 97,412.6 billion yen. As a result, the monetary base increased about 30 pct from the end of March, just before the start of the BOJ easing regime. Under the current policy, the BOJ aims to lift the monetary base to 200 trillion yen by the end of this year and to 270 trillion yen by the end of 2014, in a bid to help Japan achieve 2 pct inflation. Still, the easing policy has yet to lead to a surge in bank lending although it has supported the nation's economic recovery, analysts said. END