Goldman Sachs now sees Bank of Japan scrapping negative interest rates on Tuesday

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now expects the Bank of Japan will raise interest rates for the first time since 2007 at Tuesday’s meeting, after stronger wage outcomes and a number of news articles over recent days suggested a move is afoot.

‘These developments imply that the BOJ probably no longer needs more data for the policy change, nor to wait to justify the policy change with the quarterly Economic Outlook report in April,’ economist Tomohiro Ota wrote in a note dated March 18.

The BOJ is set to exit yield curve control completely while maintaining the current pace of gross Japanese government bond purchases and keeping exchange traded fund holdings constant, Ota wrote. The overshooting commitment, by which the BOJ commits to increasing the monetary base, is likely to be scrapped too, he said.

In a survey of 50 economists published by Bloomberg News last week, a slim majority had forecast the BOJ would end the world’s last negative rate in April. After that survey, Japan’s largest union group announced stronger-than-expected annual wage deals, fueling speculation of a March move.

The central bank has long pursued a goal of achieving sustainable 2% inflation. A key component of that goal is setting in motion a virtuous cycle in which wage growth feeds into demand-led price gains.