Japan prices stay flat despite BOJ efforts to ignite inflation

Tokyo

DATA released on Friday confirmed inflation is failing to take off in Japan despite extraordinary measures adopted by the country's central bank - including the introduction of negative interest rates - to achieve its elusive goal of forcing consumer prices up by 2 per cent annually.

So-called core consumer prices (which include the cost of oil and fresh food) remained unchanged in February from their level a year earlier, whereas market expectations had been for a modest increase.

Stripping out oil and fresh food, the "core-core" inflation index rose by 0.8 per cent in the year to February. But this was below the 1.1 per cent rise in January on a similar year-to-year basis, which in turn was below the gain in Dece…