The world's richest nations will see only slightly slower economic growth next year, leaving many central banks on course for higher interest rates at least in the near-term, Reuters polls showed yesterday.

While worries about a US slowdown linger, fears of recession have not intensified over the past month although economists expect a Federal Reserve rate cut in the second quarter of 2007 and not the third.

"It is a combination of several quarters of sub-trend growth and receding inflation that will allow the Fed to shave rates," said Stephen Gallagher, chief US economist at Societe Generale in New York.

But strong growth and inflation worries leave the European Central Bank and the Bank of England on course for higher rates this year, according to surveys of economists across the eurozone, Britain, Japan, the United States, Canada and Australia.

Even the Bank of Japan is set to raise rates again another quarter point by January-March, with the risk of an earlier move as it emerges further from deflation.

But analysts said that if there are risks they are that the Fed will hold off for now on rate cuts. Indeed, it is rare for the Fed and other major central banks to be moving in completely opposite directions with policy.

"The more usual situation is what we're forecasting and that's the Fed staying on hold for all of next year and that the Europeans and the Japanese carry on tightening," said Robert Barrie, economist at Credit Suisse.

The poll showed that while the world economy may be easing off its best growth rate in decades, economists aren't particularly worried that 2007 will be markedly slower. Forecasts recalculated by Reuters for international comparisons showed GDP growth easing to 2.7 per cent next year in the United States, to 2.2 per cent in Japan and 2.6 per cent in Canada.

UK growth should also hold up well at 2.4 per cent but in the eurozone it will cool to 1.8 per cent next year although the ECB is expected to raise rates by the middle of next year to 3.75 per cent after a widely expected move in December.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King refers to a shift in the economic landscape as the end of the NICE - or "non-inflationary consistent expansion" - decade.

Indeed while growth has cooled in the world's largest economy, inflation is set to come off a little less slowly, which could spell disappointment for those expecting a series of Fed rate cuts next year.

Financial markets have caught a whiff of that view and have backed off the prospect of rapid easing, with benchmark bond yields back on the rise although a rate cut in the second quarter rather than the third quarter predicted last month.

Economists expect the Bank of Canada to move in tandem with the United States, pulling rates there down by the second quarter in part as the collapse of the commodities boom weighs down and US demand for its exports wanes.