By Gina Lee

Investing.com – The dollar was up on Tuesday morning in Asia as expectations of interest rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve and concerns over the omicron COVID-19 variant rise.

By 12:05 ET (5:00 GMT), the that monitors the greenback against other currencies was 0.12% higher at $96.390

This pair climbed 0.02% to 113.59

Both the pair dropped 0.34%, to 0.7104. The pair increased 0.14%, to 0.6744.

Both the pair climbed 0.04% to 6.3653 while they fell 0.11% at 1.3202.

The following 20 central banks will be releasing their policy decisions for this week: the.

Later in the morning, the Fed will begin its two-day meeting on monetary policy and then announce the decision. Expect the Fed to accelerate asset tapering and investors will search for clues regarding when they expect interest rate increases in 2022.

Investors now anticipate a rate increase in June 2022 and another one as soon as November 2022.

“That leaves a very high bar for the Fed to deliver a ‘hawkish surprise’,” Westpac analysts said in a note.

“But even if the Fed merely matches elevated expectations, they are still streets ahead of the ECB, who is looking for ways to maintain accommodation” after its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP) is due to end in March 2022, the note added.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank and Bank of England will announce their policy decisions. The Bank of Japan will follow a day after.

The European Central Bank will confirm that it has withdrawn from the EUR1.85 trillion (or 2.08 trillion) pandemic crisis stimulus program in March 2022 at its meeting.

The likelihood of the Bank of England raising interest rates is decreasing, as the Bank of England has reported its first death due to an Omicron infection. China imported its first case of omicron infective disease from Asia Pacific.

In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin rose around 1% to climb up from Monday’s low of $45,750.