The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged Wednesday after pumping more than ¥5 trillion into money markets so far this week in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse.
Economic growth has been "sluggish" and "tensions" in global financial markets have increased, the BOJ said in a statement after Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa and his six colleagues left the overnight lending rate at 0.5 percent.
The Policy Board may want more evidence that weakening global growth will derail the world's second-largest economy before deciding whether to cut borrowing costs, already the lowest in the industrialized world.