The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, New Delhi

India insisted yesterday its economy would rebound next year from the impact of the global financial crisis, saying it expected to return to "much better growth" of nine percent.

"What's required now is confidence, courage and taking the steps that are necessary to compensate for the ill-effects of a world slowdown," Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told an international business meeting.

"We will be back to a high growth rate (of nine percent) in the second half of the financial year 2009/10," he said in New Delhi.

"We will bounce back to much better growth rates."

Chidambaram said the lowest official forecast for growth in Asia's third- largest economy was seven percent for the year to March 2009 which was not "an occasion for wearing sack cloth and ashes" when compared to anaemic growth rates abroad.

India's economy has grown by at least nine percent for the past three years.

The minister said it would be "helpful" if domestic interest rates could come down further but that authorities could not take their eyes completely off inflation, riding at close to 10 percent. "But the bias has shifted in favour of (stimulating) growth," he told the India World Economic Forum.