The euro zone's uneven economic recovery will force the European Central Bank to keep interest rates on hold until the fourth quarter of next year while it supports weaker members, a Reuters poll of 80 economists shows.
They also said Bundesbank President Axel Weber remains the most likely choice to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as ECB president next year.
But Weber's sharp public critique two weeks ago of the effectiveness of the bank's bond purchase programme appears to have dented his chances.
While severe budget austerity measures will likely curb growth in the euro zone's strongest economies in coming months, some of the peripheral members of the euro zone have struggled to generate robust economic growth.
The average of the poll forecasts showed interest rates on hold at a record low 1% until the fourth quarter of next year, when they are expected to rise to 1.25%.
They also expected the ECB to hike rates by 25 basis points in both the first and second quarters of 2012, unchanged from the last poll, and saw no chance of a rate hike resulting from the ECB's November meeting.
Flash euro zone purchasing managers indexes (PMIs), seen as a good timely gauge of the private sector economy, last week showed a strong performance among German companies in October but slowing growth in France.
In Italy they showed only a modest rate of expansion, while the services sectors of Ireland and Spain contracted, according to the final PMI data for September.
33 out of the 50 economists who answered an extra question about who would be the next ECB president tipped Axel Weber as the most likely candidate to replace Jean-Claude Trichet, whose term ends next October. But that was a smaller majority than the 40 out of 45 seen in a September 29 poll.
Weber earlier said earlier this month that the ECB's government bond-buying programme had not worked and should be scrapped - an opinion that put him at odds with several of his ECB peers including Trichet.
Euro zone lending up 1.2% in September
Growth of lending in the euro zone to the private sector was steady in September at 1.2% on a 12-month comparison, the ECB said today.
The revised rate in August was also 1.2%, a bank spokesman said.
The European Central Bank also said that the money supply, as measured by the key indicator of so-called M3 money, grew by 1% in September, slightly less than the rate of 1.1% seen in August.
The ECB regards the M3 money figure as the key guide to pressures likely to affect inflation in about 18 months' time. It has set a medium-term target for inflation of just under 2%.
However, owing to the depressive effects of the global economic crisis, it has also been wary of growth of the money supply falling unduly low, which would raise concerns of deflation.
