The Reserve Bank is expected to leave the official cash rate unchanged when it reviews its monetary policy on Wednesday, despite lingering concerns inflation may have a sting in its tail.

Deputy governor Christian Hawkesby said in May that there would be a 'high bar” for the central bank resuming rate rises.

ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner says anything other than it leaving rates on hold will be a 'massive surprise”.

'No-one is seeing any real possibility of anything other than a no-change decision,” says Zollner.

This would be the first time the bank's monetary policy committee has elected to leave rates on hold since August 2021.

The Reserve Bank will be reviewing its monetary policy on Wednesday, rather than issuing a new monetary statement, which it only does on each alternate meeting.

That means it won't be releasing an updated forecast on where it expects the OCR to go over the next few years, and is under no pressure to make extensive comments on its thinking.

BNZ research head Stephen Toplis says it would make sense for the Reserve Bank to keep its messaging 'short and to the point” and simply say that nothing much has changed since its last statement in May.

Central banks overseas, including the US Federal Reserve, have been talking up the chances of further rate rises in recent weeks, and there are signs the housing market might turn upwards sooner than expected, he notes.

But Toplis says recent data should leave the Reserve Bank feeling comfortable that inflation is falling, and that labour market conditions are easing in much the same way as it had anticipated in May.

Zollner says ANZ continues to see a risk that the Reserve Bank might eventually have to do more to cool inflation, but indicates any such day of reckoning is not imminent.

ASB, on the other hand, says it doesn't see the OCR spiking higher than 5.5 per cent given the impact of earlier rate rises has not yet fully flowed through to all borrowers.

'We are of the view that the Reserve Bank has done enough, with further lagged impacts on home-borrowers in particular set to flow through over the rest of this year,” its chief economist Nick Tuffley says.

'We continue to expect the Reserve Bank will start cutting the OCR around May next year, earlier than in the Reserve Bank's forecasts, though a lot can still happen on the path to lower rates.”

-Tom Pullar-Strecker/Stuff.