The Bank of England is forecast to keep its main interest rate at a record-low 0.5% and maintain its level of cash stimulus when it meets tomorrow.
Since the bank's last monetary policy meeting in March, official data has revealed that Britain's economy contracted by a worse-than-expected 0.3% in the fourth quarter.
Another contraction in gross domestic product in the first three months of 2012 would place Britain back in recession, which is defined as two successive negative quarters.
Official first-quarter GDP data is published this month.
To aid Britain's recovery, the Bank of England's nine policymakers in February voted to lift the central bank's quantitative easing (QE), or stimulus programme, by £50 billion to £325 billion. The Bank of England main lending rate has stood at 0.5% since March 2009, when the central bank also began to inject the economy with £200 billion under the radical QE policy.
Under QE, the central bank creates new cash that is used to purchase assets such as government and corporate bonds in the hope of boosting lending by retail banks and in turn growing the economy.
The bank had voted unanimously at its last meeting in March to maintain the level of the central bank's main interest rate, but policymakers David Miles and Adam Posen also wanted to increase QE funds by £25 billion.
Britain has been hit hard by the combined impact of painful state austerity measures, elevated oil prices and the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in key trading partner the euro zone.
The OECD think-tank last week said it believed that Britain was already back in recession, in contrast to the British Chambers of Commerce, which has cited an "encouraging" pick-up in economic activity in the past three months.
The Bank of England's main task is to use monetary policy tools to try and keep Britain's annual inflation rate close to a government-set target of 2%. This has proved tricky in recent times because of elevated oil prices.
Nevertheless, the 12-month inflation rate fell sharply in February to a 15-month low of 3.4% thanks to falling electricity and gas bills.
