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WASHINGTON, June 3-- The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to provide more guidance at its policy meeting next week to signal intentions to keep interest rates near zero for a few years so as to help the economy get through the COVID-19 pandemic, according to several economists. "One deliverable that we should be able to count on at the June meeting is the return of the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP)," Jay H. Bryson, acting chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote Monday in a report. "We suspect that may open the door to implicit forward guidance, a tool heralded by policymakers before the current crisis as a primary mechanism for influencing policy," he said. The Fed usually releases the quarterly SEP four times each year, which lays out Fed officials' expectations about growth, inflation, unemployment and short-term interest rates. But the central bank didn't release the SEP in March as the evolving COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for Fed officials to offer reliable economic forecasts. The upcoming Fed meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday likely will include the first update to the SEP since December last year, according to Bryson. "Rather than provide explicit forward guidance, committee members could implicitly signal that the fed funds rate is unlikely to increase through at least 2022 through changes in the dot plot," Bryson said, referring to Fed officials' individual forecasts of the federal funds rate. | 
