Of course, like the outlook for economic activity, the outlook for prices is also accompanied by uncertainty. As explained earlier, year-on-year changes in prices in Japan rose to around 2.5 percent in the summer of 2008 due mainly to the surge in prices of petroleum products, and this year, because of the base effect, prices have been declining by more than 2 percent, year-on-year.
Several years ago, there were not many people who could forecast that such changes in prices would take place, including those in the Bank and international institutions, as well as economists. As such, it is the reality that the accuracy in predicting price changes during a phase of a large economic swing is not high.