The European Central Bank is on the cusp of joining the world’s monetary hawks for the first time in more than a decade, but the Bank of Japan elected to resist the momentum for tightening and kept its ultra-easy policy settings steady.

The Bank of Japan on Thursday raised its core inflation forecasts to 2.3 per cent out to March 2023, from 1.9 per cent, and left monetary policy unchanged, underscoring its outlier status amid a global wave of policy tightening.