ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said on Friday there are "upside" risks to his view that the U.S. central bank should raise interest rates just once this year and remain on hold in 2017 and 2018.

In a presentation to the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, Bullard said his baseline is for the U.S. economy to continue to grow slowly at just 2 percent a year, unemployment to be around 4.7 percent and inflation to be at the Fed's 2 percent target.

Given that forecast, he said, the economy will need a federal funds rate of between 0.5 percent and 0.75 percent for the foreseeable future. He added that rates would need to go higher if growth speeds up.

(Reporting Ann Saphir; Editing by Paul Simao)