One of the architects of Brazil’s inflation-targeting policy has said that officials have set excessively restrictive goals.

Economist Sergio Werlang told Bloomberg that the current targets failed to account for the country’s unusually large fixed fiscal outlays. In setting the inflation target too low, officials had “put themselves in a corner and they don’t know how to get out of it”, Werlang said.

He argued that Brazil, unlike other emerging markets, spends more on pensions and public