The Bank of Japan had its first loss since Haruhiko Kuroda became governor after the value of foreign currency assets fell, it wrote down bond holdings and set aside more money to cover potential future losses on its holdings of government debt.
The bank posted a net loss of 200.2 billion yen ($1.8 billion) in the six months through September, it said Monday. The yen gained about 11 percent over the period, causing 698.5 billion yen of losses in foreign currency assets. It also wrote down almost 600 billion yen of the value of its bond holdings, and transferred about 242 billion yen to a reserve fund to pay for future liabilities on its huge debt holdings.