Bank of Japan holds 1.25% rate, raises inflation forecast and accelerates ETF sales
On October 30, 2026, the Bank of Japan maintained its short-term policy-rate target at 1.25% in an 8-1 vote; dissenting board member Hajime Takata called for a 1.5% hike. The BOJ raised its forecast for consumer inflation excluding fresh food for the fiscal year beginning in April to 2.6% from 2.4% and announced that annual ETF sales would increase from about ¥330 billion to about ¥860 billion on a book-value basis starting in January 2027.
The supplied sources explicitly support a Bank of Japan policy package announced on October 30, 2026: the BOJ held its 1.25% short-term policy target, raised its inflation forecast, and announced a faster ETF-sale pace beginning in January 2027. The market-performance commentary is excluded; the extracted development is the underlying monetary-policy and balance-sheet action. The rate hold was widely anticipated, but the inflation-forecast revision and increase in planned ETF sales provide material forward-looking information, supporting high importance but only moderate surprise. The existing developments are narrower—the rate hold and ETF-sale acceleration are tracked separately—so this combined meeting-package development is retained as non-duplicate and matched to both existing storylines. The occurrence time is anchored to the policy decision at 02:58 UTC rather than the later news-wire publication time; confidence is reduced somewhat because the ETF-sale details were disseminated shortly afterward. Approved stakeholders are limited to directly ETF-exposed Japanese equities and financial, real-estate, and insurance companies with explicit causal support in the supplied context; more speculative exporter, retailer, and broad market exposures are excluded.
The Japanese central bank says it will accelerate the pace of sales of Japanese stock exchange-traded funds, starting in January.
While the BOJ holds its policy rate steady as expected, it says underlying inflation is generally consistent with its 2% target. It raises its forecast for consumer inflation, excluding fresh food, to 2.6% for the fiscal year starting April, up from 2.4% projected previously.
The BOJ left interest rates on hold at 1.25% in a widely anticipated move, but revised up its inflation forecast and stressed anew its readiness to continue pushing up borrowing costs to forestall mounting inflation risks.