Well, compared with the situation if we had held interest rates at a different level. Rather than seeing the economy expand or slow in response to the stance of policy, at times policy will only be cushioning the effects of forces working in the other direction. The neutral rate is therefore best thought of as a long-run concept.
Led mainly by robust domestic demand, emerging and commodity-exporting economies have continued relatively high growth and are driving global growth. However, in many of these economies, concerns about inflation have been mounting due to the earlier rise in international commodity prices, prompting their central banks to lean toward monetary tightening by, for example, raising policy rates and reserve requirement ratios.