Published monthly by Japan Macro Advisors. Updated to the month of November 2019 (published on December 4th, 2019)

Recent Data Trend:

In September 2019, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) purchased 5.9 trillion yen (book value) of JGB. BoJ seems to be reducing the amount of their monthly JGB purchases. In the past 3 months, it bought an average of 5.8 trillion yen worth of JGBs. In 2017, it bought at an average pace of 8.3 trillion yen per month and in 2018, it was 7.7 trillion yen. At the end of September 2019, the BoJ held a total of 469.4 trillion yen of JGBs. As a percentage of the total JGB market, BoJ held nearly 51% of the whole market.

Brief overview of “JGBs held by BoJ”

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is currently aiming to lengthen the duration of JGB holding. In its policy statement in April 2013, it pledged that it will target to purchase JGBs with 7 years remaining maturity on average. However, the BoJ does not officially publish the duration related statistics on their JGB holding or of its monthly purchase. We, Japan Macro Advisors, estimate these statistics. These data are our proprietary data, but we permit the free use of statistics on condition that users display the source (JMA) publicly. The average duration of the BoJ’s JGB holding had been steadily falling between 2011 to early 2013 until the new BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda introduced “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing” in April 2013.

The methodology and publication schedule of the indicator(English)

The methodology and publication schedule of the indicator(Japanese)

BoJ's market share in the fixed coupon JGBs by maturity sub-sectors

BoJ's market share in JGBs by maturity sub-sectors

Note: Measured in market value at the end of each month

The Next Release Date: Febuary 4th, 2020