In our case, it gained a formal institutional structure with the passage of a new charter for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 1989. Inflation targeting arose in New Zealand in an environment that will seem rather familiar to many of our Asian friends - at least in some important respects.
It was developed in a very small, open economy that was adjusting to a newly-opened capital account, a newly-floated exchange rate, and newly-deregulated financial markets. It was developed with the recognition that a more traditional structure for monetary policy, perhaps one focused on targeting particular definitions of money supply, was likely to prove inadequate in this newly deregulated and rapidly evolving environment.