The Bank of Japan started a two-day policy meeting Thursday at which it is expected to debate whether to raise its opinion on the Japanese economy.

The nine-member Policy Board is expected to leave its monetary easing policy intact after delaying the deadline for achieving its 2 percent inflation target to around the first half of fiscal 2016, in light of the drop in crude oil prices and weak consumption.

The central bank vowed at the launch of the unprecedented quantitative and qualitative easing program in 2014 to hit the inflation target around fiscal 2015, which ends next March.

The BOJ's current assessment of the economy is that it is recovering moderately, but policymakers may consider upgrading that because recent data suggest consumer spending has begun to recover from the first stage of the consumption tax hike in April 2014. The drop in consumption forced the government to delay the second stage of the hike, which will complete the levy's doubling to 10 percent.

On Wednesday, Japanese gross domestic product data for the January-March quarter showed that consumption edged up a real 0.4 percent from the previous quarter, after a 0.4 percent gain in October-December.

The second consecutive quarter of growth helped lift GDP to a real annualized pace of 2.4 percent in the first quarter.

Although the BOJ downgraded its outlook for price growth at its previous policy meeting on April 30, Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda remains confident of achieving the goal, saying the bank's unorthodox easing policy is generating the intended effects.

In his speech last week, Kuroda said inflation is projected to accelerate toward the 2 percent target on a year-on-year basis as the effects of declining crude oil prices fade in the second half of fiscal 2015.