It is important to promote new financing channels other than bank lending in order to ensure that the effects of monetary easing permeate throughout the economy. These efforts will also improve Japanese capital markets over the long term.
As part of these efforts, the Bank started to purchase asset-backed securities (ABSs) from July 2003, and to date, the total accumulated amount of ABS purchases has amounted to around 580 billion yen. The Bank’s purchases of ABSs have stimulated the capital market, and ABSs, which had been little used in Japan, are now becoming increasingly familiar.