The minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) May 5 board meeting released today, showed that board members are happy with the current level of cash rate at 4.5 percent and giving away signs that further hikes will be far from happening in the next few months.

The RBA is confident that borrowers are now facing average level rates over the past decade which should render the central bank's monetary policy tightly positioned for any challenges that may come anytime today and the immediate future.

The RBA board's current disposition seem inclined to agree with most economists view that no rate hikes will be seen in June and in July. The board remained cautious on the debilitating financial crisis in Greece and holding the view that "it could be some time before the uncertainties were resolved."

The May 5 meeting occurred when the Greek debt issue has yet to impact on corporate bond markets but scenarios lately have seen a turnaround with corporate debt defaults piling up over the past two weeks and market shares sharply declining.

Such alarming developments should lull any hints of further rate increase moves from RBA as uncertainties are gathering pace with the effect of the Greek debt crisis starting to sink its pangs beyond Europe.

Another point of worry for the RBA is the prospect of a bear market in China with more control being imposed by Beijing to arrest the upward spiral of bad loans and inflows of money funding the property speculation.

Economists are aware that the Chinese situation could potentially prevent Australia to improve its terms of trade by 20 percent and coupled with low consumer spending confidence, the country's inflation rate would be more restrained contrary to RBA's early projection of a revised upward movement.

The RBA has tied its rates policy on the belief that the growth effects from the resources boom can only be further consolidated over the following years but the European crisis and China's new restrictive economic policy are going against that assumption with falling spot prices in iron ore signifying that the worst may have yet to happen.

All those indicators are convincing many analysts that the RBA would opt for a longer pause in cash rate hikes and the respite could take effect much longer than most economists have expected.