Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged and said they still expect to raise borrowing costs at a “gradual” pace while watching to see how the global economy and markets impact the U.S. outlook.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is “closely monitoring global economic and financial developments and is assessing their implications for the labor market and inflation, and for the balance of risks to the outlook,” the central bank said in a statement Wednesday following a two-day meeting in Washington. The Fed omitted a line from the previous statement in December saying the risks to the outlook were “balanced.”

Since the Fed raised interest rates last month for the first time in almost a decade, turmoil in financial markets and a dimming of the outlook for global growth have spurred investors to expect a slower rise in borrowing costs. The median projection of policy makers' forecasts in December called for four quarter-point rate increases in 2016; futures markets indicated ahead of the FOMC statement that traders see just one or two hikes coming.