The Reserve Bank statement after today's meeting of its monetary policy committee is expected to focus on the need to raise interest rates, two months after investors were expecting the next move to be down. Forward-rate agreements, used to speculate on borrowing costs, are pricing in a rate increase of 25 basis points by September, reversing the position in January, when the securities indicated expectations of a rate cut as oil prices plunged.All 24 economists surveyed forecast that Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago and his monetary policy committee will leave the repo rate unchanged at 5.75% (and prime at 9.25%).Though lower oil prices and stuttering consumer demand have helped rein in inflation, the rand's 6.1% decline against the dollar over the past six months, a drought that is raising corn prices and a jump in fuel taxes probably means the rate has bottomed out.Kganyago will flag the risks, according to Sizwe Nxedlana, chief economist at First National Bank."The statement will be significantly more hawkish than in January," Nxedlana said. "The benign inflation outlook that came from a lower rand oil price has been eroded quite dramatically recently."Oil's 20% recovery since mid-January has reversed some fuel price cuts, and levies on fuel announced in the Budget will add another 7% to pump costs in April. Eskom wants to increase power tariffs by 25%, in addition to a levy announced in the Budget."It's definitely going to be a different tone," Frank Blackmore, an economist at KPMG said. A rate cut "would be completely off the table", he said.The difference in yield between five-year inflation-linked and fixed-rate debt, an indicator of investor inflation expectations, has jumped 56 basis points since the last interest-rate decision. Core inflation, which strips out energy, food and fuel costs, climbed to 5.8% in February. The wider consumer inflation measure was 3.9%.A week ago the US Federal Reserve cut its estimate of the benchmark US interest rate at the end of the year, easing concern that tighter monetary policy would force the Reserve Bank to raise rates earlier...