Australia is on track to post a muted three months of growth, keeping pressure on the Reserve Bank as it walks a fine line between a soft economy and persistent price pressures.

Ahead of the March quarter national accounts on Wednesday, which includes the gross domestic product gauge, economists finalised their predictions based on data that feeds into the key Australian Bureau of Statistics figure.

KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne said the national accounts would likely show an economy “a heartbeat away from a recession”.

A “barely positive” 0.1 per cent quarterly increase has been pencilled in by KPMG and a 1.1 per cent lift year-on-year.

“Weak economic growth in the March quarter is expected to reflect anaemic household consumption, moderate government spending and business investment activity, a turnaround in inventory and a pullback in net exports,” Dr Rynne wrote in a note. 

In the quarter before, GDP rose 0.2 per cent on a quarterly basis and 1.5 per cent over the year.

Nomura Australia economists Andrew Ticehurst and David Seif said a surge in population growth was keeping the economy growing modestly and the March quarter was likely to mark the fifth period in a row of negative per capita GDP growth.

They were forecasting a 0.2 per cent lift in economic growth in the quarter and an annual rate of 1.2 per cent.

Balancing weak growth momentum against persistent inflation would leave the central bank “in a somewhat uncomfortable position”, the Nomura economists said.

Yet they said the probability of another interest rate hike was “quite low” with the RBA likely to remain focused on keeping as many workers employed as possible as the economy slowed.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said a slowing economy was an expected consequence of higher interest rates and global economic uncertainty.

In parliament on Tuesday, he took aim at “hawkish commentary” on interest rates and inflation which “completely misses the fact that the economy is already soft and people are already under pressure”.

This post was originally published on Michael West.