The Bank of Japan should maintain its current easy monetary policy until deflation is reined in, a senior official of the International Monetary Fund said Monday.

David Robinson, deputy director of the IMF's Research Department, said in a presentation in Tokyo that the central bank basically deserves credit, saying, "What the Bank of Japan has done is broadly consistent" with IMF views.

He then urged the BOJ to keep the quantitative monetary policy unchanged and said Japan will hopefully get out of deflation over the next couple of years.