Newsfrom Japan

Tokyo, March 18 (Jiji Press)--Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said Wednesday that the amount of latent losses on exchange-traded funds held by the central bank is estimated at 2 trillion to 3 trillion yen following a recent stock sell-off amid the coronavirus crisis.

The estimate is based on the current levels of the benchmark 225-issue Nikkei average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Kuroda said at a meeting of the Financial Affairs Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, the country's parliament.

The spread of the new coronavirus, which originated in China, caused global stock markets to nose-dive.

The BOJ decided to double its annual purchases of ETFs to 12 trillion yen as part of its additional monetary easing measures adopted Monday. On Tuesday, the BOJ bought 120 billion yen worth of ETFs, the largest daily amount on record.

Kuroda stressed that stepped-up ETF buying by the central bank has "certain effects as a monetary easing step."

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]