While the exact number changes from one survey to the next, the responses have tended to be rather stable. Reading the newspaper, in contrast, one often comes across an article stressing the necessity to overcome deflation and representing this as the voice of the general public in Japan.
The committee decided that although upside risks to the inflation outlook remained, the degree of risk had subsided somewhat, particularly in the light of the continued slowdown in household consumption expenditure, the widening output gap and the lower international oil prices.