Japan's parliament approved Haruhiko Kuroda for a second term as central bank governor on Friday, with a mandate to battle deflation and pep up the world's third-biggest economy, reports AFP from Tokyo.

Handpicked by Shinzo Abe to steer the former economic powerhouse out of a dangerous cycle of falling prices, Kuroda has guided the key monetary plank of the prime minister's vaunted "Abenomics" economic policy.

Now 73, the ex-president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is on course to become the longest-serving Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor if he completes a full second five-year term.

Kuroda took the helm in March 2013 with a mandate to deploy what was called a monetary "bazooka" to stoke life into the moribund Japanese economy.