Markets will be watching for any hint the ECB will intensify its bond buying support for the euro zone's financial credit crunch before a critical summit at the weekend.
At the same time, the Bank of England looks likely to leave its monetary policy unchanged with its cash rate at 0.5%, where it has been held since March 2009.
The ECB and Bank of England announcements came a day before a supposedly make-or-break EU summit which will aim to agree on key rule changes to anchor coercive budget discipline for the 17 countries that share the euro currency.
The ECB is hoping to convince the bloc's governments to give Brussels more say on their spending and accept automatic sanctions if they step out of line - issues it sees as crucial to fixing the region's problems long-term - by dangling the prospect of scaling up its purchases of troubled states' debt.
A Reuters survey of 73 analysts revealed a 60% likelihood the ECB would cut rates by 0.25% for the second month running, back to the record low of 1% it reached during the financial crisis in 2009.
With the euro zone in such turmoil it might also signal that going below 1% with rates was no longer an ECB taboo, Reuters reported.
Britain's economy is already losing momentum due to a lack of economic confidence and weak export markets.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel will lay out a plan this weekend to anchor stricter budget discipline in the euro zone, aiming to restore the bloc's market trust.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand yesterday left its official cash rate unchanged at 2.5% and indicated the first rise could be in late 2012.
ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley said the Reserve Bank ran an alternative scenario, considering the impact on New Zealand should the euro zone crisis deteriorate further.
The starting point for the scenario was recent market pricing with the Reserve Bank reverse-engineering what the global and local environment would be if they were consistent with the pricing.
In the scenario, the bank left the 90-day bank bill rates unchanged for a more extended period, out to late 2013.
Trend trading partner growth fell, approaching Global Financial Crisis (GFC) levels, but remained weaker for a more protracted period.
Trend economic growth was 1.6% below the Reserve Bank's current assumption. The terms of trade also fell back to almost GFC levels of weakness and remained at low levels for the next two years.
Mr Tuffley said the Reserve Bank noted that recent market pricing was more consistent with that scenario, with the market appearing to be implicitly assuming a more marked downturn in global conditions than the Reserve Bank's base case forecasts.
