BOJ Watchers See Next Rate Hike by July With Yen as the X Factor

Most Bank of Japan watchers judge that Governor Kazuo Ueda and his colleagues have been slow in ratcheting up interest rates, and expect the next move still to be several months away in their base case scenarios.

The X-factor in Bloomberg’s survey of 52 economists is the exchange rate, with a tumbling yen seen as potentially forcing the BOJ into faster action. A weaker currency would add to price pressures in a nation that’s already seen inflation averaging above its 2% target in the past four calendar years now.