Japan’s government nominated Haruhiko Kuroda for a second term as central bank governor on Friday, handing the veteran finance chief more time to battle deflation and kick-start the world’s number-three economy. Kuroda’s nomination was among those submitted to the parliament in a document seen by
Japan’s government nominated Haruhiko Kuroda for a second term as central bank governor on Friday, handing the veteran finance chief more time to battle deflation and kick-start the world’s number-three economy.
Kuroda’s nomination was among those submitted to the parliament in a document seen by reporters, and had been widely expected.
Handpicked by Shinzo Abe to steer the former economic powerhouse out of a dangerous cycle of falling prices, Kuroda has guided the key monetary plank of the prime minister’s vaunted “Abenomics” economic policy.
Now 73, the ex-president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is on course to become the longest-serving Bank of Japan (BOJ) governor ever if he completes his second five-year term.
Kuroda took the helm in March 2013 with a mandate to deploy what was called a monetary “bazooka” to stoke life into the moribund Japanese economy.
He has overseen a policy of ultra-aggressive monetary easing, adopting in January 2016 the BOJ’s first-ever policy of negative interest rates, effectively charging lenders to park their cash at the central bank.
The BOJ has also pledged to keep the yield on 10-year government bonds around zero by buying as many as necessary.
A perennial optimist in the long-running war against deflation, Kuroda once famously invoked the spirit of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.
“I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, ‘the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it’,” he said in a 2015 speech about monetary policy.
