Japan repeats warnings on yen as market watches for intervention By

By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Leika Kihara

TOKYO (Reuters) -Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki warned on Tuesday that Japan would take appropriate and decisive action against excessive, speculator-driven currency moves, keeping alive the possibility of more market intervention after the yen hit a new 32-year low.

Suzuki also reiterated that the authorities could intervene without any announcements, but did not comment on whether they had actually done so, when pressed on speculation that Japan may be supporting the yen without publicly acknowledging it.

“We are closely watching market moves with a high sense of urgency. We will make an appropriate response decisively to excessive moves,” Suzuki told a session of parliament on Tuesday.

Pressed by an opposition lawmaker on what a decisive response would mean, he added: “We intervened in the currency market as a decisive measure (on September 22₎.”

Suzuki, speaking to reporters earlier on Tuesday, declined to comment whether authorities were conducting stealth intervention to support the weakening yen.

“Generally speaking, there are times when we intervene by making announcements and some other times when we do without it,” he said, reiterating comments last week after meetings of financial leaders in Washington. He did not comment further on the matter.

The yen slipped to 149.10 to the dollar before the start of Asia trade on Tuesday, its weakest since August 1990, putting the major psychological barrier of 150 in focus.

Policymakers, who once zeroed in on yen strength as a source of concern for the trade-oriented economy, are now worried that the yen’s sharp fall is boosting already high commodity import costs, squeezing households, and upending business plans.

Authorities have fired verbal warnings against the yen’s descent almost daily since early September, when it reached 144 to the dollar as rate hikes by the Federal Reserve boosted the U.S. currency.

Suzuki first acknowledged yen weakness as negative for the economy in April, when it was trading around 126 per dollar. It has continued to fall sharply and is down about 20% since the start of the year.

Japan spent 2.8 trillion yen ($18.81 billion) in dollar-selling, yen-buying intervention last month when authorities acted in the markets to prop up the yen for the first time since 1998.

Estimates by the Bank of Japan released last Friday showed that excess reserves parked by institutions at the central bank would likely have declined 4.09 trillion yen as of Monday, Oct. 17, due in part to actions that could be related to currency intervention.

The BOJ’s previous estimate, released on Sept. 30, indicated a decline of 2.9 trillion yen as of the start of October.

The gap of more than 1 trillion yen could reflect funds absorbed from excess reserves as a result of yen-buying,…