The Bank of Japan left its stimulus settings unchanged at its final policy meeting of the year, as risks to inflation mount and the Federal Reserve signaled just hours before a slightly more dovish rate path ahead.
The BOJ left its yield curve control program and asset purchases unchanged, the central bank said in a statement Thursday, a result predicted by all 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda faces a deteriorating environment with inflation only halfway to the BOJ's 2 percent goal. With oil prices tumbling, economists see it falling toward zero in the year ahead. Slowing growth in China, the U.S.-China trade war and a disruptive Brexit could all hit Japan's export-dependent economy, which has contracted in two of the past three quarters.