BOJ should ‘act in line with global central banks’

TOKYO, Apr 04 (Reuters): Japan's central bank should hike interest rates to ensure the country will not fall out of lockstep with the rest of the world in its monetary policy, an associate of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida whose ideas likely inspired the premier's economic policy framework said.
Kishida's government should unleash as much as $400 billion in public spending over the next five years to boost medical and anti-disaster investment, businessman George Hara also told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
The vision of Hara, who heads an organisation that aims to reduce poverty around the world, likely served as a backbone of Kishida's "new capitalism" agenda through which the premier is pushing for greater wealth distribution.
As the US Federal Reserve and other central banks move forward with hiking interest rates, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) should follow along to avoid Japan's yield spreads widening too much, according to Hara, who published a book in 2009 also called "New Capitalism".