Introduction It is a great honor to be invited to speak at the Japan Society today. More than two years have passed since the Bank of Japan introduced Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) to achieve the price stability target of 2 percent. Let me briefly look back at these two years.
In the first year, Japan’s economy improved impressively, registering both rising growth and inflation. Real GDP growth in fiscal 2013 exceeded 2 percent and annual CPI inflation (consumer price index, all items less fresh food) increased from minus 0.5 percent just before the introduction of QQE to 1.5 percent in April 2014 (Chart 1).