Based on this assumption, the timing of the yearon-year rate of change in the CPI reaching around 2 percent – the price stability target – is projected to be around the first half of fiscal 2017.
Specifically, the medians of the Policy Board members’ forecasts of the year-on-year rate of increase in the CPI for all items less fresh food presented in the January 2016 Outlook Report were 0.1 percent for fiscal 2015, 0.8 percent for fiscal 2016, and, on a basis excluding the direct effects of the scheduled consumption tax hike, 1.8 percent for fiscal 2017.