URGENT: New BOJ chief sees need to keep monetary easing

New Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said Monday monetary easing is still needed and that he views the current program to keep borrowing costs extremely low as “appropriate,” as he gave his first press conference since taking the job a day earlier.

Ueda said attaining the BOJ’s 2 percent inflation target is “no easy” task but that he will strive to achieve it. He declined to give a specific time frame for meeting the goal.

The BOJ sets short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent and guides 10-year Japanese government bond yields to around zero percent under its yield curve control program.