The euro notched up further gains in Asia on Friday after jumping overnight on the European Central Bank unveiling a bond-buying programme to help debt-ridden members of the 17-nation eurozone. The common currency bought $1.2631 and 99.64 yen in Tokyo morning trade, from $1.2629 and 99.60 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro had climbed to $1.2652, a two-month high, earlier in the US session. It had been trading around $1.2602 and 98.85 yen before the bank’s announcement. The dollar also rose in Tokyo to 78.89 yen from 78.85 yen on Thursday. The plan, mapped out by ECB chief Mario Draghi after the bank announced an unchanged interest rate policy, offered hope that efforts to strengthen the eurozone were coming together. Traders welcomed details of the programme. “The ECB meeting has helped stabilise the euro,” Daisaku Ueno, senior foreign exchange and fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley, told Dow Jones Newswires. But it was not immediately clear if debt-hit nations including Italy and Spain would take advantage of the ECB offer, which amounts to a bailout. The move was aimed at bringing down debt-hit eurozone members’ borrowing costs and prop up the embattled euro. But critics led by Germany had warned that buying the debt of troubled eurozone nations would let them avoid painful austerity cuts that are crucial to repairing their fiscal health. Currency markets would now shift their focus to US non-farm payrolls data later in the day, a strong barometer of whether the US Federal Reserve decides to launch fresh stimulus. The dollar’s gain on the yen was helped by figures on Thursday that showed US weekly jobless claims fell for the first time in a month while a better-than-expected 201,000 private-sector jobs were added to the world’s biggest economy in August. On Friday, Japan’s government said it would delay 5.0 trillion yen in spending ($63 billion) amid a political deadlock over a bond-issuance bill necessary to help pay for some of Tokyo’s public spending this year.
