The Bank of Japan has decided to press on with its massive monetary easing program. Central bank policy makers also agreed to extend measures to help small-and medium-sized businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The decisions came at a regular two-day policy meeting that ended on Friday.

The central bank will maintain its negative short-term interest rate and continue buying government bonds with the aim of holding yields at around zero percent.

The BOJ will also continue to provide funds to select financial institutions to encourage loans to small-and mid-sized companies hit hard by the pandemic.

The measure was due to run until the end of March next year, but has been extended through September.

Meanwhile, policy makers decided to scale back a program to buy commercial paper and corporate bonds issued by large companies to the pre-pandemic range of up to 5 trillion yen, or about 44 billion dollars. That is down from the current level of 176 billion dollars.