Thursday will see the last interest rate announcement by Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard and he's likely to leave sitting firmly on his hands.
The official cash rate has stood at 2.5% since March last year and economists are not expecting that to change.
The recovery continues to grind along and should be underpinned by the eventual rebuilding of Christchurch, but job cuts at export-oriented firms such as Solid Energy and New Zealand Aluminium Smelters highlight a deteriorating global economy.
ANZ Bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie says uncertainty over the direction of the global economy will continue to outweigh any potential inflation concerns.
He says the new developments over the last few weeks have been more substantive signs of deterioration in the Chinese economy, and greater fragility in the Australian economy.
Mr Bagrie says there is still a scratchy, schizophrenic economy which makes it likely that the Reserve Bank won't move the official cash rate for some time.
He says as the economy starts to improve inflationary pressure will emerge, but that's not likely to happen until the end of next year.
"But that's tomorrow's story. What we know right here and now is that the risk profile for interest rates is being determined by the risk profile for the global economy, and unfortunately the risk profile for the global economy is down in the interim as opposed to up."
Many economists are picking it will be March at the earliest before interest rates move upwards, but ANZ Bank has pushed out its first rise until 2014, and a rate cut still cannot be ruled out.
