New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his backing to a new inflation target in a major speech on Monday, saying his government had brought down consumer price growth from double digits under the last government.
Delivering his third Independence Day address, Modi backed the 4 percent inflation target, within a range of 2 percentage points either way, that had been agreed with outgoing Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan.
The government formally "notified" the medium-term inflation target just before Rajan held his final policy meeting on Aug. 9. Figures last Friday showed inflation nudging over 6 percent, outside the target range.
We haven't allowed inflation to go beyond 6 per cent. There were two years of successive drought in the country. Production of pulses became a concerns, but despite all that we tried our best to control the situation and compared to previous governments, I and my government did not allow the cost of a poor man's thaali (plate) to be unaffordable.
