The Bank of Japan has once again pushed back the forecast for achieving its target of a 2 percent annual inflation to pull the economy out of deflation. When BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda launched the "unprecedented" monetary easing operation — a centerpiece of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's trademark "Abenomics" policies — in April 2013, he said he was confident the inflation goal would be attained in about two years. That forecast was pushed back last April to "around the first half of fiscal 2016" and postponed last week to "around the latter half of fiscal 2016."

Kuroda did so as the BOJ lowered its estimate for real-term growth in Japan's gross domestic product and consumer price increases in fiscal 2015 and 2016, reflecting the impact of China's slowdown on Japanese output and exports along with the slow recovery in consumer spending.

The BOJ governor attributed the postponement to the fall in crude oil prices that has continued longer than anticipated and insisted that the underlying price trend was steadily improving — a claim backed by a 1.2 percent increase in consumer prices, excluding energy costs, in September. He stressed that the BOJ's operation to expand the monetary base through its massive purchase of government bonds and exchange-traded funds was still working, and said the central bank was ready to take additional steps if necessary to achieve the targeted inflation.