I also would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for your cooperation with the activities of the Bank of Japan's Shimonoseki Branch. At the Monetary Policy Meeting (MPM) held last week, the Bank updated its projections for Japan's economic activity and prices through fiscal 2020 and released them in the January 2019 Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices (Outlook Report).
Moreover, high levels of public deficit and debt place an additional burden on the conduct of monetary policy. The substantial widening of long-term government bond spreads in many parts of the world has recently demonstrated that financial markets are keen to distinguish between countries on the basis of their creditworthiness.