TOKYO (Reuters) -The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Tuesday and decided to slow the pace of reduction in its bond purchases from next fiscal year, signalling its preference to move cautiously in normalising still-easy monetary policy.
As widely expected, the central bank maintained short-term interest rates at 0.5% by a unanimous vote at the two-day policy meeting that ended on Tuesday.
It also decided to make no changes to an existing bond taper plan that runs through March 2026 and laid out a new plan beyond April next year.
Under the plan for fiscal 2026, the BOJ will reduce monthly bond buying by 200 billion yen each quarter so that the size of purchases will fall to around 2 trillion yen by March 2027.
BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda will hold a news conference to explain the decision at 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT).
(Reporting by Leika Kihara, Makiko Yamazaki, Kantaro Komiya and Satoshi SugiyamaEditing by Chang-Ran Kim)
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