TOKYO (Reuters) – Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda got a pay hike of 1.1% this year, the biggest the central bank offered its governor in nine years but not enough to offset the pace of inflation that is currently running at nearly 3%, BOJ data showed on Tuesday.
The increase is nearly triple the previous year’s 0.4% hike and the biggest since a 1.3% raise in 2014, the data showed.
As a result, Ueda would earn 35.5 million yen ($238,848) in the current fiscal year ending in March 2024 with a monthly pay check of roughly 2.02 million yen, which is about 5.5 times the average monthly salary earned by Japanese permanent workers.
The modest pay rise comes despite an aggressive push by the government and Ueda himself for companies to offer bigger pay increases to cushion the blow to households from the rising cost of living, and keep inflation sustainably around the BOJ’s 2% target.
Core consumer inflation hit 2.9% in October, staying above the BOJ’s 2% target for 19 consecutive months and pressuring companies to compensate employees with higher pay after barely raising wages for the past three decades.
Japanese firms raised monthly pay by a record 3.2% on average this year, bigger than a 1.9% increase last year, a government survey showed on Tuesday.
($1 = 148.6300 yen)
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
