"I didn't expect Japan to turn into a Turkish lira when I made a forecast for the Nikkei Stock Average of 300,000," said Emin Yurumazu, an economist for Tokyo's Million Eyes who hails from Turkey, alarmed by the situation. "That wouldn't make me happy."
Yurumazu was likening the yen to Turkey's national currency in a satirical way. In Turkey, policy rates were maintained below the inflation rate -- leading to net negative interest rates -- amid prolonged double deficits in the fiscal balance and the current account balance, which led to a negative spiral of higher prices and a weaker national currency.
Over a period from March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, to October 2023, the yen's real effective exchange rate dropped 29%, compared to a 21% drop for the Turkish lira. The real effective exchange rate is an index indicating a currency's relative purchasing power, calculated with price and trade changes taken into consideration.
The Turkish lira plunged more than 70% in nominal terms over the same period, but this was attributable to the country's annual inflation rate of more than 60%. Excluding this impact, the fall was smaller than that of the yen.
This situation "highlights weakening of the yen in substance," said Toru Sasaki, chief strategist at the Fukuoka Financial Group. Japan is the world's largest creditor, but its gross government debt is far larger than Turkey's.
According to Bank of Japan statistics, the net outflow of funds to overseas through securities investment trusts -- the difference between the amount invested and the amount collected -- totaled 105 trillion yen from January 2000 to June 2023. The statistics show a trend for funds to flow out during cycles of a weaker yen, observed from 2005 to 2007, 2013 to 2015 and from 2020 to now. A new program exempting taxes on small investments, called NISA, that will be introduced in January has the potential to make this stream of individual money into a river. This is the second year-2024 problem for the yen.
Confidence in the world's largest creditor is at risk of weakening
asia.nikkei.com