The Bank of Japan refrained Friday from expanding monetary stimulus as Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda bets the world's third-biggest economy will emerge from a recent soft patch and inflation will pick up.
The central bank will keep increasing the monetary base at an annual pace of ¥80 trillion ($640 billion).
BOJ officials are assessing the strength of a rebound from what Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimate to be the first contraction since the economy took a dive last year after a sales-tax hike. While Kuroda sees last quarter's weakness as temporary, high inventories and a slowdown in China are risks to achieving his 2 percent inflation target.