After the April 6-7 meeting, the BOJ’s policy board voted unanimously to continue the bank’s ultra-loose policies, holding interest rates near zero by maintaining the target for the overnight call loan rate among commercial banks in a range of zero to 0.1%, the official minutes statement said.

Also, to appease the burden from the March 11 earthquake disaster, the board also decided by a unanimous vote to set-up a new funding mechanism that will allow the central bank to provide loans to financial institutions in northeastern Japan that were hit the hardest at a super low interest rate of 0.1%.

In the impact of the earthquake on Japan, although there was a view that the effects of the disaster would not last for a protracted period and would remain marginal, as restoration of production lines and a shift to substitutes proceeded, this view was attended by a high degree of uncertainty.