The Bank of Japan refrained from boosting unprecedented easing as accelerating inflation marks progress in its bid to stamp out 15 years of falling prices in Asia’s second-biggest economy.

Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s board stuck to its pledge to expand the monetary base by an annual 60 trillion to 70 trillion yen ($671 billion) today after a two-day meeting in Tokyo, in line with the forecasts of all 36 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The BOJ maintained its projection that core consumer prices will rise 1.9 percent in the year starting April 2015, excluding the effect of sales-tax increases, and scrapped a reference to the economy facing “uncertainty.”

With the BOJ’s preferred inflation gauge at more than half of its target 2 percent pace, analysts from HSBC Holdings Plc. to Daiwa Securities Co. have pushed back forecasts for when the central bank may add to easing. Kuroda may wait to assess trends in wages and the effects of a sales-tax increase in April before deciding on any extra stimulus.

Consumer prices excluding fresh food rose 1.2 percent in November from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2008 and approaching the 2 percent target set a year ago. For the final quarter of 2013, analysts estimate inflation was 1.1 percent, according to a separate poll, nearly three times economists’ 0.4 percent forecast in a survey in April last year.

The rate of increase in core consumer prices is likely to be around 1.25 percent “for some time,” the BOJ said in a statement.