The report says that the BOJ is likely to hold off from raising interest rates in April next week, as heightened uncertainty from the Middle East conflict continues to put policymakers off from wanting to rush a decision. The sources claim that the central bank is leaning towards keeping policy unchanged in order to size up the magnitude of the fallout from the conflict.
That being said, they note that the final decision may be a close call and is still dependent on what becomes of US-Iran peace talks in the week ahead.
One of the sources did say that the BOJ is not likely to act given how markets have already priced out chances of a rate hike for this month. For some context, traders are just pricing in ~15% odds of a rate hike as of today. However, those odds jump do jump back up quite a bit to ~57% by the time we get to the June meeting.
The sources also say that even if the central bank were to hold off on rates hikes this time around, they might still want to signal that they are ready to act as soon as June in the wake of mounting inflation pressures.
The outcome of the spring wage negotiations was already a positive factor but surging oil prices will just add to mounting price pressures for the Japanese economy. However, the mix of inflation is something that the BOJ will have to be mindful of
