Introduction  Good morning. I feel honored to have an opportunity to meet with the local business representatives here today. Let me also express my sincere gratitude for your kind cooperation with the activities of the Bank of Japan’s Nagoya Branch. More than two years have passed since adopting quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (QQE) policy in April 2013.
So I would like first to review Japan’s economic and price performance over the two years and present my own assessment on the effectiveness of QQE. After that, I will touch on the Bank’s outlook for economic activity and prices for fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2017, as described in the April 2015 Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices (hereafter, the Outlook Report). II.