  Supersymmetric Peccei-Quinn models which provide a suitable candidate for the
curvaton field are studied. These models also solve the mu problem, while
generating the Peccei-Quinn scale dynamically. The curvaton is a pseudo
Nambu-Goldstone boson corresponding to an angular degree of freedom orthogonal
to the axion. Its order parameter increases substantially following a phase
transition during inflation. This results in a drastic amplification of the
curvaton perturbations. Consequently, these models are able to accommodate
low-scale inflation with Hubble parameter at the TeV scale such as modular
inflation. We find that modular inflation with the orthogonal axion as curvaton
can indeed account for the observations for natural values of the parameters.
In particular, the spectral index can easily be made adequately lower than
unity in accord with the recent data.
