HONG KONG — Australia on Tuesday became the first major economy to raise interest rates in the wake of the global financial crisis, as policy makers around the globe debated how to withdraw their huge stimulus programs without upsetting a fragile economic recovery.

The Reserve Bank of Australia, in a move that came earlier than many economists had expected and reflected the relative strength of the nation’s economy, raised its main cash rate by a quarter of a percentage point, to 3.25 percent. The action reverses some of the series of rapid-fire cuts that the bank had made to the cost of borrowing in a bid to shelter the economy since September 2008, when Lehman Brothers’ collapse set off the global credit crisis.

Those aggressive cuts, by a combined 4.25 percentage points to a level last seen in 1960, plus a set of government stimulus measures, were widely credited with helping Australia become one of the few industrialized countries to avoid a major slump over the past year.

The bank’s decision Tuesday to start raising rates again was made amid mounting signs that the global economy was on the path to at least a modest recovery. That broad improvement has fueled a debate among policy makers around the world about whether the time is ripe to start unwinding some of the extraordinary economic stimulus measures they took after Lehman’s demise — or whether a precipitous withdrawal of those support measures could risk nipping the recovery in the bud.