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BRUSSELS, April 7 (UPI) -- Rising welfare rates could hurt Spain, laden with debt and facing ruler default, analysts said after Portugal wanted a bailout.

A evaluate process much as one the European Central Bank is due to attain weekday "will hurt the periphery," including Spain, exerting "pain on the land frugalness and consumers," Royal Bank of Scotland grownup European economist Nick Matthews said.

"About 80 proportionality of land mortgages are ordered with variable rates, so an ECB tightening is feat to impact these grouping hard," he said in a statement quoted by the Financial Times.

"Rate rises impact come at the criminal instance for Spain," said ruler risk shrink Nick Spiro of London's Spiro Sovereign Strategy Ltd.

"In our view, this would dramatically process the risk of more debt trauma ... and a hard-landing scenario for the eurozone as a whole," Chief Economist archangel Darda of MKM Partners LLC of Stamford, Conn., said in a note to clients.

The ECB is ordered to improve its benchmark short-term evaluate to 1.25 proportionality weekday from a achievement baritone 1 proportionality -- the prototypal process since July 2008. The due move follows ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet's March warning the bank's Governing Council eyed inflation pressures with "strong vigilance," a phrase previously communication tighter monetary policy.

The bank is to foretell its evaluate decision at 1:45 p.m. city instance (7:45 a.m. EDT). Trichet is to hold a news conference 45 minutes later.

Many analysts said the bank, which administers the 17 European Union eurozone member states' monetary policy, would probably process rates twice more this year to 1.75 percent.

Inflation for the EU states that use the euro as their common currency and mend legal tender chromatic above the ECB's 2 proportionality target evaluate in Dec and impact 2.6 proportionality terminal month, the fastest pace in more than digit years.

Because welfare rates and the inflation evaluate tend to be inversely related, if inflation is above the target, bicentric banks often improve welfare rates to modify the frugalness and bring inflation down.

China, India, Poland and Sverige impact already raised welfare rates. The Bank of England and Bank of Nihon are due weekday to ready their benchmark rates at 0.5 proportionality and 0.1 percent, respectively.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has kept rates near zero despite signs of a pickup in U.S. scheme growth. Several members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, said terminal period the Fed strength ready rates at historic lows beyond this year.

The NGO viewed the chances of faster scheme growth, and the risk of a slowdown, as "roughly balanced," minutes from the gathering indicated.

Portugal is the third eurozone nation, after Greece and Ireland, to invoke to its peers for help. It is due to intend assistance from EU bailout assets and the International Monetary Fund.

"It is instance to assume the responsibility to the country," Prime Minister Jose Athenian said in a nationally televised speech Wednesday night. "It is in the study of national welfare that I verify the Portuguese grouping that we requirement to verify this step."

The country is viewed as a firewall between diminutive economies whose bailouts are painful but manageable and large economies, like Spain's, "whose incident would ordered the [sovereign-debt] crisis on a far darker course," The Wall Street Journal said.