By SHINYA TOKUSHIMA/ Staff Writer
February 14, 2023 at 17:51 JST
Kazuo Ueda, the current next Bank of Japan governor. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Government officials on Feb. 14 nominated economist Kazuo Ueda to serve as the next governor of the Bank of Japan and Ryozo Himino and Shinichi Uchida to serve under him as vice governors.
Ueda, 71, was selected to succeed incumbent Haruhiko Kuroda, whose term expires on April 8.
In addition, the names of Himino, 62, a former commissioner of the Financial Services Agency and current executive fellow at NLI Research Institute, and Uchida, 60, a BOJ board member, were submitted as vice governors to the Rules and Administration Committees of the two Diet chambers.
The three nominees are expected to appear before the committees from Feb. 24 to state their views of what they intend to do and take questions from committee members.
The approval of the two Diet chambers is required for the formal selection of the BOJ governor and vice governors.
Of prime interest will be if Ueda intends to continue the ultra-loose monetary policy championed by Kuroda in his 10 years as BOJ governor.
The BOJ is the only central bank among the advanced economies that continues with such a loose monetary policy.
If approved, Ueda would be the first academic to head the BOJ after World War II.
A specialist in macroeconomics and financial theory, Ueda served for seven years from 1998 as a member of the BOJ Policy Board.
In that post, he helped fashion the central bank’s zero-interest-rate and quantitative easing policies as the Japanese economy struggled to move out of a deflationary spiral.
Speaking with reporters on Feb. 10, Ueda said, “I believe the current monetary policy is appropriate and that there is a need to continue with a loose monetary policy.”
But Japan's continued expansionary monetary policy while other central banks raised their interest rates was blamed for a drastic weakening of the yen against the dollar last year that only exacerbated surging consumer prices brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The BOJ also purchased large volumes of government bonds to artificially keep interest rates low.
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