"It's all about managing expectations. But in the sense of having to signal a food shop to Pavlov's dog. It could be a slobbering mess, up front, and with a fair bit of whimpering along the way," the BNZ Capital Markets Outlook says.

The Westpac Weekly Commentary offers similar sentiments, saying the challenge for the RBNZ in its statement this week, is to lay the groundwork for eventual tightening in a way that "doesn't scare the horses" and gives it some flexibility around the timing of increases.

"We expect that this statement will see a jettisoning of the last vestige of an easing bias and remove the expectation that rates will remain ‘at or below current levels through until the latter part of 2010'," it says.

Westpac believes the end goal is a gradual tightening cycle kicking off in the first quarter of 2010 and it also notes that some banks have begun to hike six-month fixed mortgage rates, which until now had been the only fixed term left untouched by increases.

"With floating and one-year fixed rates around similar levels, there may not seem to be much advantage in fixing right now, but those who wait until they see the whites of the RBNZ's eyes before fixing are likely to face much less attractive options," it says.

The ASB Business Weekly suggests the RBNZ will hold off lifting the OCR until April next year when it can be sure the economic recovery is sustainable. However, when it does move it expects the RBNZ will do so aggressively, unwinding the stimulus quickly particularly with initial rate hikes, as oppose to making smaller changes sooner, it says.

"We envisage it would still take a year from April to get the OCR to a level consistent with interest rates having a neutral impact on the economy," it says.

Like the other commentators, the ANZ/ National Bank Market Focus expects the RBNZ to keep the OCR unchanged at 2.5%, but to remove the "soft" easing bias that was in the September announcement.

It suggests borrowers should start considering options to hedge, due to the risk of an earlier start to the tightening cycle than it had envisaged.

"Caps allow borrowers to take advantage of current low floating rates while protecting against higher rates, for a premium," it suggests.