Japan’s core inflation hits highest level since January 2023, putting pressure on BOJ to raise rates

Japan’s core inflation rate rose to 3.7% in May and marked its highest level since January 2023, and put more pressure on the Japan Bank to raise inflation rates.

The figure, which eliminates fresh food costs, was higher than 3.6% expected by the economists participating in the survey by Reuters and over 3.5% of April.

Rice prices were 101.7% annually, an increase of more than half a century.

Japan’s rice prices have recently released urgent stocks to make the price of the country’s basic foods moderate in spotlight.

The title inflation was 3.5%, lower than 3.6% in April. This points to the 38th month in which inflation is over 2% target of Boj.

The “core core” inflation rate, which eliminates the prices of both fresh food and energy and closely monitored by Boj, rose from 3% to 3.3% in the previous month.

Inflation figure, Central Bank, at the beginning of this week after the monetary policy meeting of 0.5%, while the ratio, expression This continued by taking action to transfer price increases to sales prices and supporting basic inflation.

Boj Governor Kazuo Ueda It has been reported that Japan’s parliament will continue to increase the rates of the Central Bank “when we have more beliefs that” the underlying inflation will approach 2% or progress towards this level “.

However, the bank is expected to progress in inflation and added that “the underlying CPI inflation will be stagnant because of the slowdown in the economy”.

Separately, Japan’s GDP also shrunk by 0.2% in the quarter ended in the previous March as the exports decreased, and pointed to the first time with its agreement on a quarter basis.