TOKYO: Japan sold 9.09 trillion yen from late October to stem the currency's rise against the dollar, the finance ministry said Wednesday, amid fears over the nation's post-quake economic recovery.
Tokyo said it intervened in currency markets after the yen hit a post-war high of 75.32 per dollar on October 31, and the action at one point pushed the dollar around five percent higher against the unit into the mid 79-yen range.
Market participants had estimated that the finance ministry sold as much as 7.88 trillion yen on that day, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The government did not say how many times it stepped into currency markets between October 28 and November 28, the fourth intervention since September 2010, but the latest figure doubled the last intervention in August of about 4.5 trillion yen ($57.7 billion).
Investors have flocked to the Japanese currency as a safe haven amid volatile markets stirred by eurozone debt fears and concerns for the global economy.
Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said earlier this month Japan was waging "a war of nerves" with the currency market, blaming "speculators" who have pushed the yen to levels he says do not reflect Japan's economic reality.
Concerns are growing in Japan that the strong currency, which erodes the repatriated profits of exporters and makes their goods less competitive, could undermine a fragile recovery from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
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