Bank of Japan’s Kazuo Ueda warns of policy risks as prices and wages rise

Japan’s companies are changing their behaviour on wages and prices and raising the risks of a monetary policy error, the country’s new central bank governor has warned. Kazuo Ueda vowed that the Bank of Japan would “respond quickly” if there were any signs of a structural change in price pressures across the economy, but admitted there was a chance that the bank would be mistaken in its forecasts as the country’s inflation hits levels not seen in decades. “The risk of getting [our inflation forecast] wrong is not zero,” Ueda said in his first group interview since he became the first academic to take the helm of the BoJ in April.