Ex-BOJ’s Watanabe: Central bank must fully rely on big data to steer economy through coronavirus crisis

Dhwani Mehta FXStreet

Tsutomu Watanabe, a former Bank of Japan (BOJ) official and a pioneer of big data in Japan, said on Thursday, the positive surprise delivered by the recent significant Japanese economic data has eased the pressure off the BOJ to boost the economic recovery.

Key quotes

“The BOJ knows its conventional approach of simply tracking CPI won’t work. While they won’t change the 2% target, they will start looking at a wider range of data.”

“Policymakers will have to fully rely on big data. That’s already happening across the world and will only accelerate.”

Market reaction

The above remarks have little to no impact on the yen, USD/JPY remains stuck in a tight range around 107.15 amid fragile market sentiment, US dollar’s weakness and escalating US-China tensions.

Author

Dhwani Mehta

FXStreet

Residing in Mumbai (India), Dhwani is a Senior Analyst and Manager of the Asian session at FXStreet. She has over 10 years of experience in analyzing and covering the global financial markets, with specialization in Forex and commodities markets.

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