July 31 (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Friday but signaled its resolve to continue pushing up borrowing costs, in the wake of the government's yen-buying intervention overnight that failed to give the sagging currency lasting support.
Board member Hajime Takata was the sole dissenter to the decision, calling for a rate hike to 1.25% to respond to inflationary risks from external demand shocks.
Following are excerpts from BOJ Governor Kazuo Euda's comments at his post-meeting
new conference, which was conducted in Japanese, as translated by Reuters: RISK OF INFLATION OVERSHOOT"At a time when there is a risk of underlying inflation overshooting, delaying necessary policy action could materialize such a risk and hurt the economy."WATCHING FOR IMPACT OF AI DEMAND AND CURRENCY MOVES "The impact of AI demand and currency moves are among important risk factors we are looking at. We will look at how such factors could affect the economy and prices from our next policy meeting onward in debating monetary policy." STABLE RATE FORMATION REQUIRES APPROPRIATE GUIDANCE"I won't comment on daily market moves. For stable rate formation in market, it is important for monetary policy to be guided appropriately and for long-term fiscal policy to be guided in a way that maintains market trust." UPSIDE PRICE RISKS NEED SCRUTINY"Given that underlying inflation is approaching our 2% target, we must scrutinize upside price risks more than ever. We will debate our policy from our next meeting onward with this point in mind."
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar)
