Makoto Sakurai: Economic activity, prices, and monetary policy in Japan

Speech by Mr Makoto Sakurai, Member of the Policy Board of the Bank of Japan, at a meeting with business leaders, Shizuoka, 30 May 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
07 June 2019

A. Overseas Economies

Let me start with developments in overseas economies.

The growth in world trade volume, which had decelerated to a level below 1 percent on a year-on-year basis at the beginning of 2016, rebounded later in the year, and recorded a high growth of over 5 percent in the latter half of 2017. Amid increasing world trade volume, the annual growth rate of the global economy rose to nearly 4 percent in 2017. This global economic growth accompanied by world trade expansion was well balanced, in that it occurred simultaneously in both advanced and emerging economies.

However, the global economy started to slow from the latter half of 2018 due mainly to the effects of China's deleveraging measures, the U.S.-China trade conflict, and a slowdown in the European economy. Growth in world trade volume fell from around 5 percent in early 2018 to 1 percent at the end of the year. The outlook for the global economy for 2019 was revised downward by 0.2 percentage point in the April 2019 World Economic Outlook released by the International Monetary Fund.