Ex-BOJ’s Watanabe: Central bank must fully rely on big data to steer economy through coronavirus crisis

Tsutomu Watanabe, a former Bank of Japan (BOJ) official and a pioneer of big data in Japan, said on Thursday, the positive surprise delivered by the recent significant Japanese economic data has eased the pressure off the BOJ to boost the economic recovery.

Key quotes

“The BOJ knows its conventional approach of simply tracking CPI won’t work. While they won’t change the 2% target, they will start looking at a wider range of data.” 

“Policymakers will have to fully rely on big data. That’s already happening across the world and will only accelerate.”