Japan in constant touch with U.S. on currency market – Finance Minister Suzuki

TOKYO (Reuters) -The Japanese authorities are in constant touch with their U.S. counterparts and stand ready to take appropriate action in the currency market against volatile yen moves, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said on Tuesday.

Suzuki also said he saw no contradiction between the government’s yen-buying currency intervention and the Bank of Japan’s ultra-loose monetary policy.

“The BOJ is responsible for deciding monetary policy,” Suzuki told a regular news conference, adding that the central bank’s policy is aimed at achieving price stability.

The BOJ is set to maintain ultra-low interest rates at its two-day policy meeting ending on Friday.

Japan has been conducting yen-buying interventions to address the currency’s unwelcome sharp declines, driven in part by the divergence between the BOJ’s ultra-loose monetary policy and aggressive interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Suzuki repeated that the government would not tolerate excessively volatile yen moves driven by speculative trading.

“If we leave sharply volatile currency moves, driven by speculative trading, unattended, that would affect companies and households,” Suzuki said.

He also said Japan’s yen-buying intervention is aimed at smoothing market volatility, signalling that Tokyo was not targeting a specific currency level in deciding when to step into the market to buy yen.

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