FIT is fit for purpose, sure, but India has missed a chance to refine its inflation targeting regime
The Centre’s decision to renew the Indian central bank’s Flexible Inflation Targeting (FIT) framework for another five years till March 2031 is no surprise. Given today’s climate of uncertainty, with no clarity on when the war in West Asia will end, any change at this juncture would have risked rocking the boat. Needlessly.
Hence this status quo on the overall framework, including the four issues raised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its August 2025 discussion paper. Monetary policy will continue to target headline inflation, as mandated under the FIT regime adopted in 2016, not core inflation (which strips out volatile items like food and fuel). This is a wise call, since food accounts for a significant share of India’s consumption basket, although its weight was reduced by the recast retail price index that RBI must watch.
Similarly, there is no change in the inflation target of 4%. The tolerance band will also be retained at 2% to 6%. At one level, it would seem that the government has, in the words of RBI’s paper, missed “an opportunity to revisit some of the basic tenets of the framework to nudge the economy towards further improved macroeconomic outcomes in the best interest of all stakeholders.” But given the central bank’s no-change preference and the FIT regime’s satisfactory track record, it is hard to quarrel with that decision.
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