Highlights - BOJ Governor Kuroda comments at news conference

REUTERS - The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy steady on Friday and upgraded its assessment of private consumption and overseas growth, signalling its confidence that an export-driven economic recovery was broadening and gaining momentum.

Following are comments from BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda at his post-meeting news conference:

DEFLATIONARY MINDSET

"It is taking long to turn around Japan's deflationary mindset because the country has been mired in deflation for a long time. People tend to act on the assumption that wages and prices won't rise ... But the job market is tightening further, so we will likely see that pushing up sales prices. We expect inflation to gradually accelerate ahead."

PACE OF BOND BUYING

"The pace of our government bond buying will fluctuate from time to time depending on market conditions. The amount we buy would be determined based on how much is necessary to guide interest rates appropriately. We won't set in advance the pace of our bond buying."

INFLATION TARGET

"There's some distance to achieving 2 percent inflation, so it's inappropriate to say now specifically how we will exit our ultra-loose monetary policy and how that could affect the BOJ's financial health. Laying out specific simulations now would only create confusion. We will debate an exit strategy only after 2 percent inflation is achieved and price growth stays there stably."

ON BOJ'S PURCHASES OF EXCHANGE-TRADED FUNDS

"Our purchases (of ETFs) are one factor of our QQE programme. We don't buy these assets to manipulate stock prices to a certain level. We buy them to achieve our 2 percent inflation target at the earliest date possible."

(Reporting by Leika Kihara, Stanley White and Tetsushi Kajimoto)