Bank of Japan (BoJ) Policy Announcement Times

The BoJ, unlike other major central banks, do not have a precise time for when their policy (interest rate) decisions are announced. The BoJ’s own events calendar lists the time as “undecided”. There are also additional fluctuations in release times for those of us observing from the Western Hemisphere as Japan do not change their clocks for summer time like the US and Europe do. That said, we can get a guide by looking at recent meetings.

Note: you can get more details on the BoJ meeting schedule here.

Looking at meetings over the last two years, a rule of thumb is that typically the BoJ policy (interest rate) announcements are made between 11:45 Tokyo time and 13:00 Tokyo time but there are exceptions.  This range is equivalent to:

• in London, 02:45-04:00 GMT (winter) and 03:45-05:00 BST (summer)
• in NYC, 21:45-23:00 EDT (winter) and 22:45-00:00 EST (summer) the prior calendar day

ITC Markets looked at the six announcements YTD in 2017 and all eight BoJ policy announcements in 2016… all except one were made in this time range.  The one exception was the September 2016 meeting when the BoJ changed their whole policy framework (and so needed extra time?) and announced just a bit later at 13:18 Tokyo time.

It was a similar story in 2015: there were fourteen meetings and all but one fell into the same announcement time range (reminder the BoJ officially changed to eight meetings per year from fourteen in 2016).

But just a final reminder – this time range is only a guide based on recent meetings – the BoJ could publish their announcements earlier or later moving forwards.

Author: Michael Colman