TOKYO: The Bank of Japan on Friday released an outline of a new fund supply scheme to encourage financial institutions to make investments and loans to support the fight against climate change.

The new scheme was discussed at the central bank’s two-day Policy Board meeting that ended on Friday, in line with a decision at the previous monetary policy meeting in June.

At the meeting, the BOJ decided to keep unchanged its policy of providing massive stimulus to the economy through superlow interest rates and asset purchases.

Also on Friday, the BOJ released its latest quarterly Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices report.

In the report, the bank revised down its year-on-year growth projection for the country’s real gross domestic product for fiscal 2021 to 3.8 percent from the previous forecast of 4.0 percent released in April.

The bank’s core consumer price index, excluding fresh food prices, for the year ending next March is forecast to rise 0.6 percent, up from the previous projection of a 0.1 percent increase.

“Japan’s economy has picked up as a trend, although it has remained in a severe situation” due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the report said.

JIJI Press