Leading some members to ponder raising interest rates and shrinking the central bank's massive balance sheet in the near future, the US Federal Reserve has grown slightly more optimistic about the pace of the US economic recovery.

It was shown by the minutes released on Wednesday of the Fed's interest rate-setting meeting in late January that members believed the world's largest economy was increasingly gathering steam, though unemployment was expected to remain stubbornly high for the next year.

The central bank should start selling off assets in the "near future" in a bid to lower its balance sheet of more than $2 trillion, "Several" members of the Fed's board suggested. A series of  unprecedented lending programmes for banks over the past two years to help pull the financial sector out of crisis has been unleashed by the Fed.

One member, Thomas Hoenig of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, argued that the Fed should change its long-running language that interest rates will remain at their record low "for an extended period".

The Fed has held interest rates at their record low since December 2008 in an effort to pull the US economy out of its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The bottom end of its economic forecasts was slightly raised by the central bank. The Fed further said that US economy will grow between 2.8 percent and 3.5 percent this year, up from a range of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent that was predicted in November. (With Input from Agencies)