Japan Injects 111 Trillion Won to Defend Yen in One Month...Record-High Intervention

The scale of Japan's foreign exchange market intervention, which began last month to curb the weakening of the yen, has been tallied at a record 111 trillion won.

Yonhap News Agency

According to Nikkei and other sources on May 29, Japan's Ministry of Finance announced that the size of its foreign exchange intervention from April 28 to May 27 amounted to 11.7349 trillion yen (approximately 111 trillion won).

Nikkei reported that this is the largest scale of intervention by the Japanese government in response to a weakening yen.

At the end of last month, as the yen/dollar exchange rate surpassed 160 yen and the yen sharply depreciated, the Japanese government moved swiftly from strong verbal interventions to actual market actions, purchasing yen and selling U.S. dollars in the foreign exchange market.

Although the specific dates of the interventions were not disclosed, it was reported that after conducting a yen-buying and dollar-selling operation on April 30, the authorities intermittently intervened in the market during the Golden Week holidays earlier this month.

As a result of these foreign exchange interventions, the yen/dollar exchange rate dropped to the 155-yen range, but has recently returned to around 159 yen.

This was the first intervention by Japan's foreign exchange authorities in about one year and nine months since July 2024.

Previously, the Japanese government intervened in the yen market by purchasing yen on two occasions: 9.7885 trillion yen (approximately 92 trillion won) on April 29 and May 1, 2024, and 5.5348 trillion yen (approximately 52 trillion won) on July 11 and 12 of the same year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.