The Bank of Japan began a two-day policy meeting Monday amid market expectations that it will strengthen its commitment to keeping interest rates ultralow to prevent a surge in the yen following a potential rate cut in the United States later this week.
But some officials at the central bank are concerned that a mere tweaking of its post-meeting statement may only add to the widespread view that the BOJ is running out of policy tools to provide additional monetary stimulus to the economy, which has been suffering from the uncertain global outlook.
Aiming to achieve its 2 percent inflation goal, the BOJ has already lowered the short-term interest rate to minus 0.1 percent and guided long-term rates around zero percent following six years of aggressive monetary easing under Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda.