HIGHLIGHTS-BOJ's additional measures to ease credit

The Bank of Japan cut its key policy rate to 0.10 percent and took other steps, such as increasing its outright purchases of government bonds and temporary outright buying of commercial paper.

Following is a summary of the Bank of Japan's latest easing measures:
-- BOJ will increase outright purchase of JGBs to 1.4 trillion yen per month from 1.2 trillion yen until now, starting this month.

-- BOJ will include 30-year JGBs, 15-year floating-rate JGBs and 10-year inflation-linked JGBs in its buying of JGBs.

-- In order to manage the duration of its JGB holdings, the BOJ will introduce three separate buying schemes based on maturities: a year or less to maturity; one to ten years to maturity;

and over 10 years to maturity. The details will be announced as soon as they are worked out.

-- The BOJ will buy commercial paper outright temporarily to help ease a funding squeeze at the end of the fiscal year in March. It will also study measures on other corporate debt products.

-- The bank said it would study how long and to what extent it will take on credit risks.

-- The BOJ will include the Development Bank of Japan, a government-affiliated bank which is asked to buy commercial paper, as its counterparty for money market operation.

-- The BOJ said it will conduct the new operation to buy corporate debt, which it unveiled earlier this month, six times from January.

-- The Lombard rate was cut to 0.30 percent from 0.50 percent. The interest rate the BOJ will pay on excess reserves is kept at 0.10 percent. All rate changes are effective immediately