India's two-speed inflation strains its indebted firms

Mumbai

INDIAN firms battling towering debts are calling for more interest rate cuts as they worry that the central bank is tying monetary policy too much to consumer inflation and ignoring the longest streak of wholesale price falls on record.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan in 2014 started using consumer prices as the bank's key inflation measure to focus policy on ordinary Indians. This year, the link between consumer prices and monetary policy became even stronger as the RBI formally adopted an inflation-targeting regime.