At the outset of this meeting, I would like to explain the Bank's view on economic and price developments, and also talk about its thinking on recent financial conditions surrounding firms and on the conduct of monetary policy. I. Economic Developments Baseline Scenario I will start by talking about economic developments.
It is still unclear how COVID-19 will affect domestic and overseas economies, partly due to the emergence of a new variant named Omicron. As I will mention later, the outlook for the global economy also is unclear because of various factors such as inflation.