By Leika Kihara
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday he has no plan for the government’s pension fund to buy the central bank’s holdings of exchange-traded funds (ETF).
“The Bank of Japan holds ETFs as part of its monetary policy efforts to achieve its price target. It’s up to the central bank to decide on how to load the holdings,” Kishida told parliament.
“The government has no plan to request or instruct GPIF to buy the central bank’s ETF holdings,” he said.
Kishida made the remark in response to a lawmaker’s request in parliament to consider having Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) buy the BOJ’s ETF holdings.
The BOJ ended eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its radical stimulus programme in March, including a framework to buy risky assets such as ETFs that had been in place since 2010.
The central bank has yet to lay out a plan to unload its huge holdings of ETFs and government bonds partly out of concern of destabilising financial markets.
With the BOJ moving toward normalising monetary policy, some politicians and market players have flagged ideas on how to unload its huge ETF holdings or tap the proceeds for spending.
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
