According to the Bank of Japan’s interim assessment released in January 2014 of the October 2013 Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices (hereafter the Outlook Report), the median of the Policy Board members’ forecasts for the real GDP growth rate was 2.7 percent for fiscal 2013, 1.4 percent for fiscal 2014, and 1.5 percent for fiscal 2015.
The median of their forecasts for the year-on-year rate of increase in the CPI, excluding the direct effects of the consumption tax hikes, was 0.7 percent for fiscal 2013, 1.3 percent for fiscal 2014, and 1.9 percent for fiscal 2015. II.