The Reserve Bank of Australia is in a wait-and-see mode as it tries to work out whether it needs to deliver households more interest rate cuts.

The minutes from the RBA’s April 2 board meeting show the central bank believes current low interest rates are providing a boost to underperforming sectors like housing and retailing.

But it said the high value of the Australian dollar and waning mining investment are hurting the economy.

The RBA said further rate cuts may be needed, but it wants to wait and see whether the full effect of last year’s cuts flow through the economy.

“At this meeting, the board’s judgment remained that, on the information currently to hand, the most prudent course was to hold rates steady and to continue to assess developments over the period ahead,” the minutes from the RBA meeting, released on Tuesday, said.

The RBA cut the cash rate by 1.75 percentage points from November 2011 to December 2012 and has kept the rate on hold at 3.0 per cent so far this year.

RBC senior economist Su-Lin Ong said the minutes showed the central bank was still waiting to see whether sectors apart from the resources industry had picked up enough to offset an expected slide in mining investment.

“It is clear that the RBA remains in wait-and-watch mode as it tries to gauge the impact of a number of competing factors,” she said.

JP Morgan economist Tom Kennedy said the minutes were a little out of date and did not take into account a recent rise in the unemployment rate, and a slowdown in Chinese economic growth.

“The minutes are outdated, so you’ve sort of got to take what has been mentioned with a grain of salt,” he said.

Mr Kennedy said the disappointing economic news since the meeting was unlikely to prompt the RBA to cut in May, though another cut was likely later this year.

“They are probably looking for the longer-term trend and they are not going to jump at shadows.”