The target was subsequently changed to 2.5 percent in 1997 and further to 2 percent in 2004.2 Chart 12 shows that the medium- to long-term inflation expectations in that country converged to around 2.5 percent in the 1990s and have been around 2 percent since 2004.
For the United Kingdom and the United States, which have been successfully stabilizing those expectations at around 2 percent, the current view is that expectations should be maintained at the current stabilized level. This issue will be brought up again in Section III.