Federal Reserve officials will look past low inflation and stay focused on raising interest rates around mid-year as they meet this week, according to a narrow majority of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Some 45 percent of 53 economists in the survey said the central bank will raise the benchmark lending rate in June. Six percent said July, while 30 percent said the Fed will wait until September for the first increase since 2006. Fed officials last month said they expect to raise the rate this year.

“The economy is increasingly showing signs that it is no longer in crisis mode,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York, who is forecasting a June increase. “Low inflation is mainly an oil-price story” and that “will be good for the U.S. economy.”

The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, meeting for the first time in 2015 on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, will be challenged by reports contrasting the encouraging performance of the U.S. economy with a global outlook that has darkened since they met in December.

The European Central Bank last week announced it would spend 60 billion euros ($68 billion) a month starting in March on purchases of debt to ward off the threat of deflation -- a damaging, widespread decline of prices -- in the euro area.

The euro has weakened almost 3 percent against the dollar since the ECB’s Jan. 22 decision, creating a potential headwind for U.S. growth by making its exports more expensive. Economists in the survey said the Fed would shrug off the impact of a stronger dollar.

Strong Dollar

Some 28 survey participants, or 53 percent, said the rise in the dollar against major currencies makes no difference to the timing of the first rate increase.

Similarly, 66 percent said the ECB’s decision to start a quantitative-easing program worth at least 1.1 trillion euros makes no difference to the timing of the first Fed rate increase.

Any tweaks in the Fed’s communications on the current outlook for the economy and U.S. monetary policy will also be constrained by the lack of a press conference by Fed Chair Janet Yellen after the conclusion of the meeting on Wednesday.

A clear majority of 72 percent of respondents said they don’t expect the phrasing in the policy statement released at the end of the meeting to signal a significant shift toward the risk that inflation is too low.

“I suspect that the Fed is loath at this point to introduce anything that takes away from the thesis of a mid-year rate increase,” said Guy Lebas, managing director at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.

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