they made the decision after their first two-day meeting under the new governor haruhiko kuroda. policymakers decided unanimously to double the outstanding monetary base in two years through an asset purchase program. the monetary base is the total cash in banking reserves that the central bank provides to the markets. in more detail, the bank will expand the buying of long-term japanese government bonds and increase the average remaining maturity of the bonds from the current period of less than three years to seven years. it also plans to more than double the purchase of exchange traded funds in two years. that's an increase of about $10.5 billion a year in terms of their amounts outstanding. the policy board members decided to change more important frameworks for asset purchasing. they will integrate two separate bond buying programs to give greater transparency. currently, one supplies necessary funds to the market and the other is for the purpose of monetary easing. in addition, they have decided to suspend a self-imposed rule of limiting sovereign debt purchases for the tim