The Bank of Japan Friday upgraded the nation's economic growth forecast for the current and next financial years, due to the global economic recovery. The economy was set to expand 2.9 per cent for the year to March, up from an earlier estimate of 2.3-per-cent growth, the central bank said according to dpa. The bank also expected the economy to grow 1.4 per cent in the next financial year to March 2015, upgraded from a projection of 0.8-per-cent growth three month ago. The consumer price index was on course to climb 0.7 per cent in the current financial year and 1.4 per cent in the next one, up from 0.4 per cent and 0.9 percent, respectively, which it had estimated in January. The bank also expected the index to rise 1.9 per cent in the financial year through March 2016. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who took office in March, vowed to reach a 2-per-cent inflation target within about two years. The bank was to maintain its aggressive monetary easing policies to pull the world's third-largest economy out of 15 years of deflation, it said earlier. The bank's board decided unanimously to keep increasing the monetary base at an annual rate of between 60 trillion yen (606 billion dollars) and 70 trillion yen, according to a statement issued after its monetary policy meeting. The bank said this month that it would double the money supply to 270 trillion yen by the end of 2014, from 138 trillion yen at the end of 2012.
