Concretely, with a view to pursuing quantitative monetary easing, the Bank decided to change the main operating target for money market operations from the uncollateralized overnight call rate (i.e., interest rates) to the monetary base (i.e., quantity) and conduct money market operations so that the monetary base will increase at an annual pace of about 60–70 trillion yen.
The monetary base is the currency supplied to the economy as a whole by the Bank; more specifically, it is the sum of banknotes and coins in circulation and financial institutions’ current account deposits at the Bank of Japan.