Bank of Japan chief defends monetary easing as yen keeps weakening

The chief of the Bank of Japan on Wednesday defended its policy of continuing with monetary easing as the yen briefly fell to a seven-and-a-half month low against the U.S. dollar in New York the same day.

“Although the headline rate of inflation is above 3 percent, which is well above the 2 percent inflation target, we think underlying inflation is still a bit lower than 2 percent,” Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Japanese central bank, said at an event in Sintra, Portugal.

“That’s why we are keeping our policy unchanged at the moment,” he said during a session of the ECB Forum on Central Banking,...