The new governor of the Bank of Japan stressed Monday that no major rate hike is on the horizon, noting that the long-standing loose monetary policy remains "appropriate".

This month, Kazuo Ueda took over the post of central bank governor from Haruhiko Kuroda , who held the position for the longest period in Japanese history during which he engineered monetary policy aimed at boosting the world's third-largest economy.

Ueda, 71, begins amid pressure to catch up with peers around the world who have raised interest rates to combat inflation.

But Ueda made it clear that there will be no immediate change in the policy currently adopted by the central bank.

"Japan is not currently in a position where it needs to raise interest rates significantly," the governor said in his first press conference since taking office.

And Kuroda, who became governor in 2013, tried every possible recipe, from a negative interest rate to spending huge amounts of money on government bonds to boost the moribund Japanese economy.
However, the goal set by the bank, which aims to reduce the inflation rate to 2%, is still far from being achieved amid stagnant wages.

Prices have risen by up to 4 percent in recent months, but they rose only 3.1 percent in February compared to the same month a year earlier.

The central bank says the current price increases are largely temporary and a result of temporary factors such as the war in Ukraine and the resulting hikes in energy prices.