Japan's central bank buys record gov't bonds in fiscal 2022

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) bought a record 135,989 billion yen (1.02 trillion U.S. dollars) in Japanese government bonds in fiscal 2022, almost double the amount a year earlier, the central bank said.

To counter increased bond sales in the market caused by its yield control policy, the BOJ actively bought 10-year and other government bonds in the year through March, the largest amount on record, topping the previous high of 115,800.1 billion yen marked in fiscal 2016, according to a BOJ filing on Monday.

The purchase amount expanded about 63 trillion yen from fiscal 2021 and about 1.5-fold from the 88,025.6 billion yen in fiscal 2013, when outgoing BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda took office and embarked on a massive monetary easing policy, the data showed.

Under its yield curve control program, the BOJ sets short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent while guiding 10-year Japanese government bond yields around zero percent.

Last December, the BOJ announced a shift in its ultra-loose monetary policy, raising the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond as high as 0.5 percent from a previous cap of 0.25 percent. However, the move failed to stem speculative bond selling.