Bank of Japan board members said they needed to assure investors that interest rates would stay low even after they end emergency programs to facilitate corporate funding, minutes show.

“It was most important that the bank clearly explain its basic policy stance of steadily implementing measures to maintain the accommodative financial environment,” many members said, according to the minutes of their Oct. 13-14 meeting released in Tokyo today.

Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and his colleagues decided on Oct. 30 to end their programs of purchasing corporate debt in December as central banks around the world phase out emergency measures taken at the height of the financial crisis. The board also pledged to prolong its policy of holding interest rates near zero to shore up the economy as they predicted deflation will linger through the year starting April 2011.

“The BOJ will continue its accommodative policy, given that the recovery is very gradual,” said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo and a former central bank official. “The challenge for the central bank is to provide liquidity before they start to discuss raising rates.”

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