“If inflation is below 6 percent, there’s probably an argument that we can tolerate a bit of higher inflation, but when it is around 9 percent, as it is, we are way past the threshold. There is no question, inflation is inimical to growth,” Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao said at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

India’s central bank raised benchmark interest rates to 8.25 percent in September, the 12th hike in the last 18 months, and analysts polled by Reuters expect another hike this year.

Inflation in Asia’s third largest economy rose above 9 percent in August, the highest rate in a year and among the highest in the world.

Many emerging market central banks have wound up monetary tightening campaigns amid signs of slower global growth. The RBI has faced some criticism for pressing ahead with higher rates.

While growth has slowed, Subbarao said inflation was being driven partly by long-term structural changes such as rising rural incomes and changing dietary habits in rural areas.

Complicating matters, the rupee recently hit a two-year low against the dollar, forcing the central bank to dip into its foreign exchange reserves last week to prop up its currency.

Subbarao would not comment on whether authorities would do more and reiterated that their objective remained to simply smooth out excessively volatile exchange rate moves.

Other Asian central banks have made more aggressive forays into the market in recent weeks in an attempt to defend their currencies as investors pull money out of emerging markets for fear the world economy was slowing down.

South Korea last week stepped up intervention to lift the won from its weakest level in a year, while Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines sold dollars to prop up their currencies.

Subbarao said policymakers around the world were not as well equipped to fight a renewed global slowdown and said obstacles to more fiscal spending was putting the burden on the shoulders of central banks.

Central banks and governments today “have no fire power left: governments cannot raise fiscal stimulus and central banks have exhausted most conventional and unconventional policies,” he said.