Bank of Japan (BOJ) could move away from its current tolerance of rising prices and adopt a more aggressive inflation-fighting stance as early as December, potentially accelerating the pace of interest rate hikes, according to Tsutomu Watanabe, a former central bank official and an expert on Japan's price trends, Reuters reported.
Watanabe, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Tokyo, said Japan is facing a third wave of inflation, this time driven by the Middle East conflict. The first wave was triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war, while the second came from domestic wage increases and higher rice prices, he said in an interview on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
