Japan factory output falls; BOJ keeps policy unchanged

30-Apr (AP, via YahooFinance) — Japan’s central bank has defied expectations it might expand its monetary stimulus to help get growth back on track, keeping policy unchanged despite data showing factory output fell in March.

A brief statement from the Bank of Japan reaffirmed the central bank’s intention to maintain its asset purchases and other measures aimed at spurring inflation to help stimulate corporate and consumer spending.

The government said Thursday that industrial production fell 1.2 percent in March from a year earlier and 0.3 percent from the month before. The decline was relatively mild: manufacturers and analysts had anticipated a drop of over 2 percent from February, when output fell 1.3 percent from the month before.

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PG View: While the industrial production drop was not as big as expected, on the heels of the huge retail sales plunge, the overall tone of the Japanese economy remains pretty bleak. This constitutes an abject failure of the herculean monetary effort on the part of the Abe government and the BoJ to stoke growth and inflation.