Updated

Japan's central bank has opted to keep its monetary stance unchanged while monitoring the impact of its recently imposed "negative interest rate policy."

The Bank of Japan ended a policy meeting Tuesday by saying it was studying risks to growth for the world's third-largest economy.

Analysts had been divided over whether the Bank of Japan would expand its lavish asset purchases to inject still more cash into the economy.

The economy contracted in the last quarter of 2015 and some economists believe it might shrink this quarter, in what would be Japan's third "technical recession," or two straight quarters of contraction, in four years.

The BOJ forecast that exports and industrial output would remain sluggish, but said the economy was still in a "moderate recovery."